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[1.12.x] Asteroid Recycling Technologies


RoverDude

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Interesting idea. Instead of using an EM catapult mass driver you use high energy lasers or some other method to expel it as hot vapor.

It would be really energy hungry though...

I would say compromises have to be made for gameplay at that point the stock game only gives you a few ways to provide serious amounts of power and you can't mandate everyone download the near future electrical and solar mods so power consumption for vaporizing rock in kerbal would be serious on a kerbal scale but would be a woefully tiny fraction of what would be needed in real life.

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I didn't mean any criticism. I'm planning to use this mod (and all of RoverDude's others) in my game and I like to have some idea how these things would work in real life.

This one is using the 'shoot magnetized stuff out of a nozzle' approach. The red glow is the friction of the rock bits colliding.

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This one is using the 'shoot magnetized stuff out of a nozzle' approach. The red glow is the friction of the rock bits colliding.

why not save adding a resource and switch out rock for EL Ore then? unless there is some obscure law of non metallic magnetics that I'm missing.

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why not save adding a resource and switch out rock for EL Ore then? unless there is some obscure law of non metallic magnetics that I'm missing.

Because then you'd have asteroids with a 100% harvest potential for ore. Which would not be realistic.

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Cool. That implies that the pulverized rock has a high concentration of something which is magnetic or at least affected by magnets. I might write myself a small converter which can sift the rock for ore or something.

You should already have a Rock->Ore converter in the package. The low efficiency reflects that the dust is a mixture of magnetic and non-magnetic substances and that even the magnetic components of the dust consist partly of metals that are of no value for manufacturing.

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Have you thought of adding a sort of survey system? It could be fun to grab on with a survey probe and take a core sample for analysis which would reveal the concentrations of different resources in the asteroid. You might find one rock with high metal content while another may have a high concentration of subsurface water ice and substrate usable in OKS/MKS.

You should already have a Rock->Ore converter in the package. The low efficiency reflects that the dust is a mixture of magnetic and non-magnetic substances and that even the magnetic components of the dust consist partly of metals that are of no value for manufacturing.
I tend to tweak things. In this case the converter is a bit generous as far as what all the rock can be converted into, regardless of the low conversion rate. Edited by forsaken1111
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Have you thought of adding a sort of survey system? It could be fun to grab on with a survey probe and take a core sample for analysis which would reveal the concentrations of different resources in the asteroid. You might find one rock with high metal content while another may have a high concentration of subsurface water ice and substrate usable in OKS/MKS.

That was prototyped in some of the earlier prereleases, where there were different kinds of Rock resources with different conversion efficiencies, and analyzing an asteroid with the Probe would assign how much of each kind of Rock you would get from it. ART 0.4 has simplified to one type of rock with non-game-breaking baseline amounts of everything, likely because multiple Rock resources caused other annoyances.

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Have you thought of adding a sort of survey system? It could be fun to grab on with a survey probe and take a core sample for analysis which would reveal the concentrations of different resources in the asteroid. You might find one rock with high metal content while another may have a high concentration of subsurface water ice and substrate usable in OKS/MKS.

I tend to tweak things. In this case the converter is a bit generous as far as what all the rock can be converted into, regardless of the low conversion rate.

That feature is there, but being moved to FTT to keep core ATM nice and light

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Because then you'd have asteroids with a 100% harvest potential for ore. Which would not be realistic.

Ore doesn't 100% convert to metal and metal doesn't 100% convert to rocket parts and unless you are using EL the ore is still no more useful than rock, and really what is wrong with using all the mass you can gather in space as building material? people are already going to conect that rock dust is magnetic and contains metal so they will make MM configs to convert it into metal anyway so merging the two resources would logically cut down on the part bloat that having tanks extractors and converters for two different resources would create

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Ore doesn't 100% convert to metal and metal doesn't 100% convert to rocket parts and unless you are using EL the ore is still no more useful than rock, and really what is wrong with using all the mass you can gather in space as building material? people are already going to conect that rock dust is magnetic and contains metal so they will make MM configs to convert it into metal anyway so merging the two resources would logically cut down on the part bloat that having tanks extractors and converters for two different resources would create

Because it precludes all other plans that are in store for rock. Rock is a tier-0 resource, Ore, Substrate, Minerals, Water, Karbonite are all tier 1. But folks are free to MM whatever they want :)

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Because it precludes all other plans that are in store for rock. Rock is a tier-0 resource, Ore, Substrate, Minerals, Water, Karbonite are all tier 1. But folks are free to MM whatever they want :)

So why when you convert rock into one resource is the rest thrown away? why not just have one conversion part that converts rock into all its possible trace resources at the same time assuming you have storage for it?

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So why when you convert rock into one resource is the rest thrown away? why not just have one conversion part that converts rock into all its possible trace resources at the same time assuming you have storage for it?
Its pretty clearly a placeholder implementation of a future system he has planned. It lets us do something useful with rock other than vent it. I'm sure it will be better later on when his full plans are realized. Until then I'll MM some configs according to my own ideas for it.
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Well that is excellent news because I planned to test out FTT tonight.

'Core ATM'? Which one is ATM?

im fairly sure he meant this mod (ART).

@Roverdude: dont move TOO many nifty features to FTT as i havent decided to use that mod. i like to build my own transports

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im fairly sure he meant this mod (ART).

@Roverdude: dont move TOO many nifty features to FTT as i havent decided to use that mod. i like to build my own transports

Thats pretty near my own concerns when I hear people say that the core simple ART mod is supposed to be highly inefficient. I don't use tac life support so I don't care for water minerals and substrate and the mass of the asteroid they are realistically supposed to comprise what I care about is whether I'm going to be able to extract enough fuel from an asteroid to justify the expense of capturing it and sticking claws jaws and hatches all over it since I'm looking at asteroids as an alternative to planet bases for fuel making as long as KAS is in the state its in.

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@passinglurker:whats wrong with KAS? aside from restrictive licensing that is...

i understand your concern but im actually in the camp that hopes conversion rates stay inefficient as i do use TAC-LS and dont want roids to be just easy access to everything. challenge is fun

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@passinglurker:whats wrong with KAS? aside from restrictive licensing that is...

i understand your concern but im actually in the camp that hopes conversion rates stay inefficient as i do use TAC-LS and dont want roids to be just easy access to everything. challenge is fun

the bugs the patches the only temporary licence allowing the community to update it for compatibility only in the dev's absence. Honestly it all seems very uncertain to me and I'd rather just not rely on it at this time.

as for wanting a challenge its a nice sentiment but if you can't get more out of an asteroid then what you put into capturing it when it comes to fuel resources then the mod would honestly be useless.

Same goes if you only turn a very small profit because then in order to do anything besides capture more you need to repeat the same task repetitively.

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maybe the mod can check for whether a person is using TAC-LS or some other mod and if present the roids will convert at default rates but for guys like you who want greater fuel output the mod can move up that rate if they dont have tac-ls

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maybe the mod can check for whether a person is using TAC-LS or some other mod and if present the roids will convert at default rates but for guys like you who want greater fuel output the mod can move up that rate if they dont have tac-ls

I think the problem is more fundamental it basically becomes "what is the point of building an asteroid base if taking off and landing with my drills and converters still attached is more efficient?" moving asteroids around you are transporting a lot more deadmass than you are with mining landers the resource yield of asteroids needs to be powerful in order to make up for that.

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The mass driver doesn't seem to be providing any thrust, it's just draining resources and glowing. I've tested it in hacked gravity and compared it to the Rockomax 48-7S to be sure. Is anyone else having similar problems?

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the bugs the patches the only temporary licence allowing the community to update it for compatibility only in the dev's absence. Honestly it all seems very uncertain to me and I'd rather just not rely on it at this time.

This is pretty much my concern as well. You have a mod where the author and license holder has been MIA going on a month without any updates at all. Compounding the problem is the restrictive license which makes it impossible for the community to pick up the ball and move the mod forward without the express permission of the author. So in this state it makes it difficult to know what the future will hold. I am grateful there are those who were willing to patch it up, but there is little incentive to do much more than basic bug fixes.

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thankfully Roverdude has indicated that he will eventually put out a KAS rewrite at some point so this shouldnt be an issue much longer

edit- maybe we can name it MMM (manual manipulates mod)? lol just spitballing here

Edited by Jagzeplin
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I think the problem is more fundamental it basically becomes "what is the point of building an asteroid base if taking off and landing with my drills and converters still attached is more efficient?" moving asteroids around you are transporting a lot more deadmass than you are with mining landers the resource yield of asteroids needs to be powerful in order to make up for that.

With mass drives specifically designed to move around roids it could be more effcient (as in zero cost actually) if you don't mind waiting. I haven't got to test it fully yet (damned rock 50mil km apoapsis at like 2500m/s and 85 degree inclination.....) but I guess ability to tow almost anywhere a huge natural tank with some bonus resources to grab along the way is quite rewarding for setting up a solid base.

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