[1.x+] Community Resource Pack

[RoverDude]

2 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

There reason this happens is that the CRP has a serious shortcomming which is that you can only add (positive), not reduce by an absolue value or multiply or divide with rational number. One of of the first steps Ration Resource is to remove all resource because There is no other way to achieve it globally.

Addition is by design in the stock system.   And there's a series of overrides noted above.

• If you want to override the CRP defaults, go for it - fully 100% supported out of the box by entering planetary overrides.
• Once CRP has no overrides, you can even make your own globals for your mod to whatever defaults your mod desires.
• If you and another mod share a resource, it's going to take the most optimistic view.  If you disagree with that, then have a conversation and get to a compromise.

With distribution removed from CRP,  there is absolutely no reason for a mod to explicitly remove or reduce resources set by another mod.  This goes double if your mod does not actually even use the resources in question.

 

[Poodmund]

As someone who would have to remedy the Outer Planets Mod distribution in light of this proposed change, I am all for it. CRP definitions should not be tampered with... by definition, that's the whole point. If this separates the 'definition' from the distribution and balance then I see that as a good move.

[FreeThinker]

7 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

With distribution removed from CRP,  there is absolutely no reason for a mod to explicitly remove or reduce resources set by another mod.  This goes double if your mod does not actually even use the resources in question.

Alright, lets try to think out of the box here. Lets say your the author of Rational Resources and wanted to reduce the distribution of ore globally by 95%, how would you try to realize this rationally?

Edited July 1, 2021 by FreeThinker

[RoverDude]

54 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Alright, lets try to think out of the box here. Lets say your the author of Ration Resources and wanted to reduce the distribution of ore globally by 95%, how would you try to realize this rationally?

 

All depends on the 'why'.   Resources are not a balance lever in isolation, and do not exist in a vacuum.  It's about how the resources are used.   There are a few different ways to approach it, but it all depends on the why.  

 

Edited July 1, 2021 by RoverDude

[Nertea]

@RoverDude I do disagree that no mod should ever edit another mod's stuff. Lots of mods do that, it's up to the author of the 'editing' patch to be clear that they are the support resource for the supported combination. If RR wants to screw with somebody else's resource distributions via MM, whatever. It's just now RR's problem. I realize how it changes the support model but fundamentally you can't make a license that says 'don't MM my stuff', you just need to spend the time setting up the process (canned reply, etc) for when the conflict inevitably comes up. 

@FreeThinker The point here is to get this argument out of CRP. If two mods have different ideas of balance right now it becomes everyone's problem, rather than a discussion between say, the RR and MKS authors. Better to have the community thing stable and fairly immutable than go through this every time an author wants to tune a distribution slightly. 

 

[RoverDude]

3 minutes ago, Nertea said:

@RoverDude I do disagree that no mod should ever edit another mod's stuff. Lots of mods do that, it's up to the author of the 'editing' patch to be clear that they are the support resource for the supported combination. If RR wants to screw with somebody else's resource distributions via MM, whatever. It's just now RR's problem. I realize how it changes the support model but fundamentally you can't make a license that says 'don't MM my stuff', you just need to spend the time setting up the process (canned reply, etc) for when the conflict inevitably comes up. 

@FreeThinker The point here is to get this argument out of CRP. If two mods have different ideas of balance right now it becomes everyone's problem, rather than a discussion between say, the RR and MKS authors. Better to have the community thing stable and fairly immutable than go through this every time an author wants to tune a distribution slightly. 

 

Not about licensing, more about bypassing a perfectly functional system and dumping in support headaches.  Easy enough to sort, and would prefer to sort it separately from CRP (whether via discussion, or failing that, incompatibility settings and/or defensive modding).

In any case since there seems to be no disagreement at least as far as splitting out definitions go, I'll be pulling those out in a future CRP release after labor day - that gives folks plenty of time to update what they will, unless one of you needs more time.  I'll be switching my pre-releases over to give it a whirl in the interim.

[JadeOfMaar]

@RoverDude Allow me to confess that I heavily underestimated how much difficulty I've created for MKS users and I apologize for causing you undue support trouble. I'm aware of the issue of the Dirt resource which is crucial to MKS, and that will be fixed very soon. If there are other MKS specific resources that are very needed and very missing, do let me know. As for Ore, its appearance is setup to be a gamble-- to appear in most but not all biomes. I will undo that, and have it appear in all biomes so there should be no need for you to take action.

However, I do not believe that I have bypassed a perfectly functional system or otherwise broken anything. The premise of Rational Resources is to make resources more scarce or more abundant depending on what a given planet is presumed to be made of. It says so right in my mod's description so anyone who installs it knows what they're getting into. If one does not like it, one does not install it. RR also resists the installation of Handwavium resources like the Gold Standard mod's actual "Unobtainium" and USI's Karbonite and Karborundum. It's easy enough to counter that if someone really wants these, but this goes against the point of RR.

RR's resource distribution is an opt-in system, so fundamentally, there is no conflict and no need for you to split CRP's resource placement into its own mod or do defensive modding. This may actually cause more headaches than help to cure them. Also, I and other modders will disagree where you say that ISRU balancing should only apply to what harvesters are provided, and that resource placement should only be additive. Getting to harvest a resource, and how easily, is only part of balancing. Whether the resource is even there, as per the nature of a given planet, is also part of balancing.

The reason why Ore is made scarce is that it's omnipotent by default (everything can be made from it) which disenchants a subset of players; those who lean not so much toward stockalike but any amount towards Realism Overhaul. Ore is made scarce (as a fundamental part of the overall challenge of RR) so that players are encouraged to use the various specialized resources with new resource chains, and to use the mods that use them best (with the most emphasis towards cryofuels).

[RoverDude]

21 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@RoverDude Allow me to confess that I heavily underestimated how much difficulty I've created for MKS users and I apologize for causing you undue support trouble. I'm aware of the issue of the Dirt resource which is crucial to MKS, and that will be fixed very soon. If there are other MKS specific resources that are very needed and very missing, do let me know. As for Ore, its appearance is setup to be a gamble-- to appear in most but not all biomes. I will undo that, and have it appear in all biomes so there should be no need for you to take action.

Appreciated.  More comments to follow - I think there's a path that should work for everyone and keep us from colliding.

 

21 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

However, I do not believe that I have bypassed a perfectly functional system or otherwise broken anything. The premise of Rational Resources is to make resources more scarce or more abundant depending on what a given planet is presumed to be made of. It says so right in my mod's description so anyone who installs it knows what they're getting into. If one does not like it, one does not install it. RR also resists the installation of Handwavium resources like the Gold Standard mod's actual "Unobtainium" and USI's Karbonite and Karborundum. It's easy enough to counter that if someone really wants these, but this goes against the point of RR.

There are two major problems, and you have provided a prime example of bypassing and breaking a system in your own example.  First - RR is bundled in JNSQ, which completely breaks Karbonite.  Second - it bypasses how stock resources work, which is an additive system, and ideally we leverage the systems that exist.  Someone may want to opt into both the RR resource distribution while being able to add other stuff (i.e. Karbonite, or other similar mods),  and it would be a losing battle to try to find every mod and every 'handwavium' resource.  As it stands, Karbonite cannot be used in a JNSQ save because you explicitly remove it via RR - and people opted into installing Karbonite.  This is not unlike walking onto a playground and stabbing the soccer ball just because you personally do not like playing soccer.   Since you're explicitly modifying CRP to make it non-compatible, the logical (but not very fun) answer would be to mark CRP as incompatible with RR.  And while this would solve the problem, it would not be neighborly (hence the discussion and request at hand).  A more appropriate way of handling this would be to:

• Remove assumptions of resources from CRP (which is happening),
• Remove the Module Manager overrides to CRP from RR (since CRP would not be the host of these anyway).
• Add in your own set of additive planetary overrides in RR to put in a resource distribution you feel makes sense (emphasize on additive).
• Mods would then add in whatever they feel is appropriate.  Global config nodes to handle third party planet packs, or planetary/biome ones for additive resources specific to their mods (like Karbonite).  

End result is that players get exactly what they want given the specific mods they have opted into, and no need for defensive modding - and we're leveraging resources exactly as intended when I built it (since modder interop was a huge design factor).

 

21 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

RR's resource distribution is an opt-in system, so fundamentally, there is no conflict and no need for you to split CRP's resource placement into its own mod or do defensive modding. This may actually cause more headaches than help to cure them. Also, I and other modders will disagree where you say that ISRU balancing should only apply to what harvesters are provided, and that resource placement should only be additive. Getting to harvest a resource, and how easily, is only part of balancing. Whether the resource is even there, as per the nature of a given planet, is also part of balancing.

See above.  Because (a) it explicitly impacts CRP, (b) is bundled with a popular planet pack, leading to confusion, and (c) flat out breaks some of my mods, then our choice is either compromise (and by removing it from CRP, I can then ask very nicely to not override the various USI configs), or force defensive modding to land us in pretty much the same place.

Regarding ISRU - Resources do not exist in a vacuum.  In a world where the only configs for the Karbonite resource exist in the Karbonite mod, RR has really no reason to mess with those, as it is not a consumer of that resource, and the stock system is extremely good at merging together multiple conflicting resource configs on it's own.  There's an argument for Ore as that's stock.  But I do not think there's an argument for something like Karbonite (in a post-CRP-distribution world) since that would be explicitly overriding something someone else opted in, and may not have bargained for when they got JNSQ (especially if they know how stock resources work, and assume everyone acts in good faith).

 

21 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The reason why Ore is made scarce is that it's omnipotent by default (everything can be made from it) which disenchants a subset of players; those who lean not so much toward stockalike but any amount towards Realism Overhaul. Ore is made scarce (as a fundamental part of the overall challenge of RR) so that players are encouraged to use the various specialized resources with new resource chains, and to use the mods that use them best (with the most emphasis towards cryofuels).

I really don't have a bone to pick with Ore to be honest.  Though in my opinion the best way to handle it would be via planetary/biome overrides or worst case (and not sure if this is what you do for ore or not) override the stock general distribution.  That would leave planetary/biome overrides open for other modders to use as they see fit without conflict. 

So in closing, what I would respectfully ask is that you remove explicitly eliminating resources based on the presence of CRP, since it will no longer have any distributions.  And I'd ask that you not override any USI mods please.  Whether other modders have a similar request or not is really their call, but it at least moves the conversation to the appropriate place (and to be honest, is an improvement for CRP since in a USI save vs., say, a KSPIE save, you clean up a bunch of resources that your installed mods don't even use - which in itself is a nice side effect).

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by RoverDude

[Kielm]

Speaking as someone who likes to mix and match mods, I do find it frustrating when mods don't play well with each other, as it forces the player to limit themselves to a specific subset, which greatly reduces options and causes headaches when getting partway through a career and discovering that x mod doesn't mesh with parts from mod z. 

For example, I can't use USI mods comfortably with Near Future / KSPIE, or have to accept the imbalance and specifically design things that either use parts (e.g. reactors) from one mod or another, and avoid mixing. There's more:

• I like system heat, but it won't work well with non-stock converters
• KSPIE & Near Future vs USI reactors are all over the place
• WBI mods (e.g. pathfinder) doesn't work well with MKS, or requires extensive duplication

I'd love to try rational resources, but the thought of spending hours figuring out what works, what has to be tweaked and what I'll need to remove to get it there puts me off. I'd love to have a go at JNSQ or other similar "total conversion" modpacks but again, in the current venn diagram of "mods I want to play with", the centre region of "mods that actually work well together" is difficult to define. Don't get me wrong - I understand that you can't exactly crowbar all the great functionality that KSPIE has into stock, and mods have to work outside the box sometimes to deliver the cool stuff we get to play with, but I would be grateful for any efforts to reduce the number of mods that I (and others) have to exclude when choosing how to play. 

Not judging anyone or wanting to complain - your efforts in creating & maintaining these mods are 100% appreciated and make KSP so much better, I just wanted to share my experience and voice my support for any efforts to improve interoperability.

[JadeOfMaar]

@RoverDude Okay, then. After taking time to think, (and seriously considering the playground analogy) I've come to this position...

Rational Resources will only purge resource placements concerning each resource that it actively (re)distributes. That is:

• It will only affect resources that it manipulates and will not purge resources apart from that. This effectively ends the whitelist system (for mods that add their own resources) so those who make them will no longer need to tag them to not be purged. This will fundamentally cure the USI conflicts and overall incompatibility.
• For these resources, it cannot, however, obey the additive-only/"optimistic" philosophy, as @FreeThinker and I have stated: good balancing does not and cannot only reside in the (greater) abundance of resources, but also resides in the scarcity and even total absence of a resource. Additive isn't the end-all and be-all. It is only one side of the coin or dice. This is fine for players who don't want challenge beyond how MKS operates, but it is not fine for the many players who welcome the challenge of resources being selectively abundant where appropriate. A believable system that requires balance and stability needs Subtractive operation as well as Additive. Examples:
  • One cannot expect to find much or any of all desired industrial heavy resources on an obvious ice planet;
  • One cannot expect to find much or any Water on Venus. In a KSP universe where everything is Additive, the planets would all tend towards being magically perfect for all ISRU operations. That's not what a believable or realistic™ universe can look like;
  • In terms of life support (Kerbalism), a planet's atmosphere may be haphazardly given a lot of Nitrogen but is presumed by RR enthusiasts to be composed of Carbon Dioxide. Logically, the Nitrogen cannot stay there. Simply pouring on enough Carbon Dioxide to dwarf the Nitrogen is not the correct answer.

That's as good as it gets, and the only real issue that I can see remaining is if a resource mod insists on setting the globals for any resources that Rational Resources handles. In which case, the author of the config (if it contains non-zero values) may still need to be tagged in order to apply and override. That's an issue for me to answer, and I'll happily teach that author the needed MM skill to do that and more if I'm asked and available.

My stance here should be quite sufficient to no longer warrant a mark of incompatibility with CRP or splitting off of its resource placements into its own mod. So... Is this satisfactory?

[RoverDude]

@JadeOfMaar - thank you in advance for the discussion, it's appreciate (even if we don't fundamentally agree).

We're fundamentally in this pickle because CRP made assumptions about distribution - which we are going to correct.  So to be clear, after labor day, CRP is going to be released with zero distributions in the box.  this is already done in development and is under test.  At that time. it's going to be up to the mod authors (both planet pack and parts mods) to cast their appropriate visions, understanding those are probably going to conflict.

In that world, as noted before, there's no need to remove resources... as there are none.  Anyone who uses CRP is opting in for the configs.  Distributions are up to the mods.  The only reason distributions were included originally was to provide a fallback.  But since these fallbacks are causing some strong disagreement, it's easy enough to solve this problem.    In that world, RR becomes a bespoke resource distribution pack and some nice defaults for planet pack makers - which is great.  It's exactly what I had hoped would happen when I built the stock resource system.

And if, say, KSPIE likes those settings, then @FreeThinker is free to bundle them, take a dependency, or use them as a starting point.  By all means, rock on.   It also means I'll have my own more bespoke settings for MKS, Karbonite, etc. now that they are USI specific and not generalized for global use.

It also means we're not going to have cluttered resource windows.  The soon-to-be-removed distributions in CRP were consensus, but also meant there were a lot of things players never used.  This sorts that (unless you're using a few different mods all with different resource chains - but then that's what you opted into).  This, as @Nertea noted before, is a good thing.

We should also chat about a misconception of 'additive'.  It does not mean just 'adding more stuff', but rather leveraging the priority system built in.  It's a smart system of defaults to encourage a bit of harmony.   Ideally, those can be leveraged.    If a resource pack made assumptions, say, about water on the mun, then that comes with the reality that some other mod may disagree, and the system is going to try to reconcile those.   

So who's in the right here?  In my opinion, it's the player.  They have a reasonable expectation that when they install mods, they are going to work.   Especially in a case where CRP has no distributions - at that point, they are explicitly subscribing to a resource set by installing a mod.  Breaking that, in my opinion, will always be wrong.  I may disagree with Kerb4lZer0420's 'infinite fuel and money' mod, but it's not my place to actively work against it.    If they decide that giant piles of free-standing exotic matter are the resource they want to use for it - I may talk to them and suggest something else if it causes some weird balance issues.  But if they are insistent, then I shrug and move on.  Not my mod, and apparently players dig it enough to download and install it and seem happy with it.

I will always say it's wrong to remove a resource through offensive coding.  Especially since without CRP having distributions, mods would either be targeted without context (bad), or by name (infinitely worse).   I think time will tell where we all land.  For now, as noted, CRP distributions will be removed, and I am going to request to please not explicitly target it as there would be no reason to.  The rest, we'll see how things shake out.

[JadeOfMaar]

@RoverDude You're welcome. This oddly, suddenly seems quite comforting.

7 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

We should also chat about a misconception of 'additive'.  It does not mean just 'adding more stuff', but rather leveraging the priority system built in.  It's a smart system of defaults to encourage a bit of harmony. 

Ah. I get that much more clearly now.

I eagerly wait to see what release day looks like.

[theJesuit]

I've been following (lurking) on this discussion and delight in the change suggested and soon to be implemented.

One of the reasons I set up Simplex Resources was because of the diversity of resources that i didn't want or need.  It was frustrating and felt like bloat.  Don't get me wrong,  the project is admirable and useful, but the distribution  thing was one of the issues.

Another, which isn't addressed, is the way in which part mods would then option storage for these, which is still the case. But that is part mod issues not CRP

Knowing what I know now,  i probably would have set up Simplex Resources to more more akin to Rational Resources, except stripping down and patching part mods, but thisnwould have caused more issues i suspect... or different ones.

Thanks for maintaining this useful mod.

Peace.

[Brainpop14]

Any word on this for 1.12?

[RoverDude]

1 hour ago, Brainpop14 said:

Any word on this for 1.12?

Given that it's only config files, it's compatibility version has been set to 1.99 for a while   So no need for a new release.  

[Brainpop14]

Thanks

[JadeOfMaar]

On 7/7/2021 at 11:56 PM, theJesuit said:

Another, which isn't addressed, is the way in which part mods would then option storage for these, which is still the case. But that is part mod issues not CRP

Ideally there should be no problem here. Shipping off the distribution system would only threaten mods that are concerned with finding and harvesting resources. The definitions remaining is all that matters.

I expect RoverDude will put CRP's distributions into USI Tools or USI Core (as he hinted, I think). One of these absolutely must be present when anyone intends to use any other USI mod. (The other one is just the freight tanks and reactors.) ...Or it would be a new tiny modlet, not explicitly named "USI something" but still mandatory in the face of the other USI mods.

[RoverDude]

40 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Ideally there should be no problem here. Shipping off the distribution system would only threaten mods that are concerned with finding and harvesting resources. The definitions remaining is all that matters.

I expect RoverDude will put CRP's distributions into USI Tools or USI Core (as he hinted, I think). One of these absolutely must be present when anyone intends to use any other USI mod. (The other one is just the freight tanks and reactors.) ...Or it would be a new tiny modlet, not explicitly named "USI something" but still mandatory in the face of the other USI mods.

Close.  It will be split across mods that explicitly need the resources.  So Karbonite in Karbonite,  the MKS chain in MKS, etc. 

[Starstrider42]

I generally support this change.

Does the "no distributions in CRP" policy apply only to planetary resources, or will the asteroid resource config also be removed? Custom Asteroids is currently "stompy" with that one, and this seems like a good opportunity to clean it up. On the other hand, because of the way PartModules are handled during save game loading, ModuleAsteroidResource and ModuleCometResource are nowhere near as conflict-friendly as resource nodes, so a centralized config may be the lesser evil.

[RoverDude]

3 minutes ago, Starstrider42 said:

I generally support this change.

Does the "no distributions in CRP" policy apply only to planetary resources, or will the asteroid resource config also be removed? Custom Asteroids is currently "stompy" with that one, and this seems like a good opportunity to clean it up. On the other hand, because of the way PartModules are handled during save game loading, ModuleAsteroidResource and ModuleCometResource are nowhere near as conflict-friendly as resource nodes, so a centralized config may be the lesser evil.

Plan would be to move asteroids out as well.   Asteroids are additive by nature, but to your point there's no conflict resolution.  Should not be necessary to be stompy tho.  Feel free to ping me off-thread if you want to discuss potential conflicts.

[Araym]

Preface:

I use A LOT of mods. Probably "too many".

Among them, CryoTanks and related patches for A LOT of mods.

 

Issue:

I'm in the process, using CryoTanks as inspiration, to adapt some old mods that I find useful for myself.
During the balancing process, I noticed something that is puzzling me:

basically, I noticed how VERY different is the cost of the same tank, if it run as LOX (stock 9:11 ratio between LiquidFuel/Oxidizer), LH2/OX (15:1 CryoTank ratio between LqdHydrogen and Oxidizer) and LCH4/OX (3:1 CryoTanks ratio between LqdMethane/Oxidizer.

This is a simple example (a tank with, stock, 450 fuel + 550 Oxidizer, for a 1000 units total):

 

Oxidizer	LiquidFuel	LqdHydrogen	LqdMethane
density = 0.005	density = 0.005	density = 0.01097000000	density = 0.00042561
unitCost = 0.8	unitCost = 0.8	unitCost = 0.0367500	unitCost = 0.45
	LqdFuel	LH2	LCH4
Fuel quantity	450	3750	1875
Oxidizer quantity	550	250	625
Total Fuel	1000	4000	2500
Ratio	9:11	15:1	3:1
Fuel Cost	360	137.8125	843.75
Oxidizer Cost	440	200	500
Total Fuel Cost	800	337.8125	1343.75

 

I do not want to go too deep in any technicality (I'm an average person, and probably Engineers and Technician in the field by profession could debunk my assumption easily), but I'm trying to figure out some werid thing I noticed, as player, following these assumption:

• Ratios used/densities are considered only as final value needed to balance the overall cost
• Liquid Fuel: it should be the "easier" fuel to obtain; it's easy to storage, it has average performances (as ISP, assuming it is basically Kerosene... yeah... mileage could vary, based on engine technology, but overall that is...); it has no issue in long term usage in space (no boil-off)
• LqdHydrogen: it is hard to storage (a LOT of boil-off), so in game (as CryoTanks introduced) it needs insulation and/or active cooling; it's, generally speaking, costly to obtain (there are a lot of way to do so, not only pyrolisis, but I assume that, even if available in high quantities, in modern day, the net energy spent is high, and it is useful just because, the costly production offer some benefits, as ISP); it has the best performances (best ISP overall)
• LqdMethane: it is not so hard to storage (little to none boil-off, being a big molecular compoound); it is fairly cheap to obtain (a lot of gas extraction sites); it has a better ISP than LiquidFuel but slightly worse than LqdHydrogen

I kind of figure that the cost of LqdMethane is, probably, someway, based of the real life, cost/availability of liquid methane for automotive usage (based probably on US$ prices???) so I assume that could be left as it is (better overall ISP could be paid in game)...

... BUT the thing that is puzzling me is, actually, the SO LOW overall cost of LqdHydrogen tanks:

in the example above, taking for granted that 800 credit is the base cost of that tank, that the methane version could have been balanced equally with real life consideration, so 1343.75 total could be good, I personally should expect to see the hydrogen tank being the MOST expensive, not the cheaper (a consideration, gameplay wisely, that you can get better ISP, but at the cost of tank complexity/usage of EC to avoid boil-off/high production costs).

By some fast math, I see that, probably, the cost of both was based on actual usage of Methane and Hydrogen for cars (the easiest way to get some prices, and some of those I run too), but:

• both hydrogen and methane used for cars are not CRYOGENIC contained , but only mantained in a "liquid" state by pressure (again: i'm not a scientist, I espect some technician in the field to debunk my assumptions, but I suspect that for rockets that has an HUGE impact: that "more fuel x volume" squized using cryogenic chilled fuels make the "more cost/complexity x volume" ramp up probaly exponential, rather than the hi-pressure only methane used in household common usage)
• methane for cars is way more expensive, for example, than the same methane used for home appliances, but they are THE SAME product (and in this I have some knowledge: I worked for some methane retailers and, even if based on my country, I know the HUGE difference, up to 1\3 for home applications)

Overall, I have not a final value to propose (I have my own concern about it):

In a game perspective, I would balance the tank cost as LiquidFuel<LqdMethane<LqdHydrogen, based on their performances in game only, rather than various comparison to real life.

It's not so much difficoult for the methane: a reduction, to place the above example tank in the 900 credits range as fuel cost, leave a value of (900 total minus 500 Oxidizer = 400 credits for LqdMethane... 400/1875 units = 0.21~ x units.. as it was a job of mine, I know that, in my country, it's not so far from the cubic meter cost in € for house usage, removed the cost of taxes and the provider profit... so also doubles as a real life parallel), but then the LqdHydrogen should be the most expensive (let's say that the above tank should be the one in the 1300 credits overall, more likely the actual LqdMethane) then going for an HUGE higher price:  1300 total costs, minus 250 Oxidizer cost, leave a 1050 credits. Divided by the 3750 volume units, it gives a 0.28 credits/units in in game price for LqdHydrogen... it's almost a 30x value respect the actual one, but I feeling it as more balanced value than the, actual, "cheaper fuel/best performance fuel" we have in a CRP modded game.

Knowing that I do not have a real life comparison/figures for the LqdHydrogen, I made these absumptions only looking on a game-balancing perspective.
I would like to know, @RoverDude, what figures were used to extract the actual CRP's LqdH prices, just to see if there is a way to, actually, place a more balanced value.

As the developer of reference for CryoTanks, I would also like to invite @Nerteato this discussion, to eventually share some thoughts.

Thanks in advance for any answer

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Araym

[RoverDude]

@Araym - You can see who curates each of the resources in the resource definition file.  Those costs were agreed to ages ago by the involved parties, so I'd personally be pretty hesitant about changing them, since it would break a lot of mods that depend on that pricing to set tank costs, etc.

 

Also more for the thread in general, there's a bleeding edge CRP out that has the removed resource distributions.  Per prior chats, there was to be a post-labor-day release that would include this change, so I'd recommend getting your resource defs set if your mod includes harvesters (this is not relevant for mods that don't depend on resource harvesting distributions).  Good news is that since stock resource distribution handles duplicate definitions really well, you can mix your custom distributions with CRP either with or without it's own definitions without issue, so no need to time releases (though tentatively I am lookin at pushing this out in the next week or so).

[Araym]

@RoverDudeI understand that me, as "a single nobody", has "no power" to "force" a change: I'm here just as an user/player (looking at the related LqdHydrogen/Lqdmethane, as you adviced, it seems that both falls under Nertea maintenace, so it was not a totally mistake to ping him in the previous message...) trying to figure "why some things are set in a way that, in MY own game, they seems odd".

I do not like to make too much of a comparison to "real life", but basically, even taken in account the "boil-off" problem, in a modded game like mine, in any career, ANYTHING is superseeded once LqdHidrogen is reach:

• better ISP
• better costs
• no need of any different chemicals even (or probably even more) for lifters from Kerbin, as boil-off is painful for interplanetary stages (unless used in conjunction with a lot of mods that upgrade nuclear engines to LqdHydrogen usage, more likely in real life, rather than the kerbal Kerosene counterpart of LiquidFuel... at that point leaving the "more common" LiquidFuel just for atmospheric planes jet engines)

It's a lot of time from my lastest days in KSP, so I'm only recently returning to play it (the "final release" will lower the need to constant update mods for each release), and, restarting from the ground with my careers, I found extremely odd the discrepancy found on LqdHydrogen tanks (... probably is because I'm still bound to an "early gameplay", just to re-discover all the new things added since my last time in KSP).

Being CRP the "common resource", I found just more easy to talk about it here: not seeking to "impose my will", but rather "understand"...

... and without any further annoyance, once that, return to my own game, where I'm kind of capable, eventually, to customize things, once I grasped the PRO and CONS of some, actually implemented, choices, by the most influencial modders: I do not want to be unpolite... just having "A LOT" of mods, often developed with different mindsets, I'm not new to "smooth angles" when they are put together, to then develop a personalized version of the game that plays "more intuitively" in MY own mindset.

KSP is the first game that offer to me that, in some way, probably because I'm following it since 0.13 and I saw its own development. I actively mod it myself. Not "releasing mods to the public", but for the possibility offered, knowing its own "coding", between cfg files and a bit of MM, to tailor the end result to my preferences.

For me is not a "game", but a "software language" that allow to develop "my own game of little green men".

----

Aside that:

35 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

Also more for the thread in general, there's a bleeding edge CRP out that has the removed resource distributions.  Per prior chats, there was to be a post-labor-day release that would include this change, so I'd recommend getting your resource defs set if your mod includes harvesters (this is not relevant for mods that don't depend on resource harvesting distributions).  Good news is that since stock resource distribution handles duplicate definitions really well, you can mix your custom distributions with CRP either with or without it's own definitions without issue, so no need to time releases (though tentatively I am lookin at pushing this out in the next week or so).

So, now, each mod that involves some kind of harvesting is it going have its own "Resource Configs"??? I will have to check each of those, one by one???

Having still installed the "old" configs, will the new one  be compatible/MM patches/have the same syntax alike them??? Have I to remove them and add/wait each mod to develep their own???

Sorry, again, for all of these questions (maybe made thousand of times) but, as said, I'm back from a LONG hiatus from KSP and I'm trying to get a grasp of all the changes occurred during the time (I'm behind, probaly, 5 or 6 major release, from my latest time here)

I'm at lost here too, now: seeking for some answer brought me more questions...

Edited September 10, 2021 by Araym

[RoverDude]

34 minutes ago, Araym said:

So, now, each mod that involves some kind of harvesting is it going have its own "Resource Configs"??? I will have to check each of those, one by one???

Having still installed the "old" configs, will the new one  be compatible/MM patches/have the same syntax alike them??? Have I to remove them and add/wait each mod to develep their own???

Resource definitions (cost, volume, etc.) still remain in CRP.

Resource Distributions (where can I harvest/mine stuff?  Is there water on the Mun or not?) is being moved out and down to the mod level.

Stock resource distribution already handles merging multiple configs really well, so this should not be an issue, and should settle some tussles where folks may disagree with how resources are spread out (and to be honest, the CRP ones were just basic fallbacks - bespoke IMO is always better).  

This should have no bearing on what you were asking about (that is, resource attributes).

[Araym]

46 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

This should have no bearing on what you were asking about (that is, resource attributes).

Indeed it will not: it just happened that you mentioned a thing that I was not aware of...Taken notice of it, we can go on on the main topic of my appearance:

the underlying cost balance between LiquidFuel, LqdHydrogen and LqdMethane.
Hydrogen, for sure, is "the common material in the universe", but in my own grasp of rocketry, also one of the hardest fuels to manage, given the boiloff problems.
 

I totally get the more "scientific data" under each resource (density, heat capacity etc etc): those are easy to find around and, with a bit of knowledge, even to understand.
In fact I'm not arguing that: I still do not grasp "the money" involved, then, to quantify the usage of those value.

I'm not asking a complex dissertation: a simple "we found this cost in this piece of paper/this reference: it show this cost/units. In game, that real life units equal to xxx units in game. It looked plausible" followed by a "Oh... I didn't know it...." by me, and I will disappear in peace.

I didn't find (up to now, internet hunting) a clear "real life" value to just debunk myself or any misconception of mine (eventually dumbely exposed in my previous posts), prior to rush here and ask: it just seemed odd the disparity in game.

(I'm a very curious guy, even more when related to science, and in scientific fashion I find myself in the urge to "ask/inquiry" things that I do not know: not to debate anyone else knowledge, but to wider mine)

Edited September 10, 2021 by Araym