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[1.4.1] Kerbal Construction Time 1.4.0.69 (2018-03-24) - Unrapid Planned Assembly


magico13

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Do you plan on adding the queue concept to R&D as well? It feels kind of cheap compared to the VAB/SPH. I'd love to see my research queue up as well, and to have the ability to prioritize between my different research departments...

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Sorry if this has been brought up before, I tried a quick search and couldn't find anything. I'm having an issue with using this mod together with real fuels- during the time after I hit "launch" to the time it takes for the vessel to build, I get boil-off of things like liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen, because real-fuels thinks the vessel has been sitting on the launchpad during the entire construction time.

Is there any way to get KCT to restore resource amounts to VAB settings when pulling the vessel out of VAB storage?

thanks

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Is there any way to get KCT to restore resource amounts to VAB settings when pulling the vessel out of VAB storage?

thanks

Well, that's actually what does happen, so that's a definitely strange issue :/ Launch works by saving the vessel ConfigNode (a direct, unchanging copy of the vessel in the editor) to a file and then starting a brand new launch with that file (identical to starting a new flight by clicking on the launchpad). I wonder what RealFuels does differently that causes that to happen :/

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Well, that's actually what does happen, so that's a definitely strange issue :/ Launch works by saving the vessel ConfigNode (a direct, unchanging copy of the vessel in the editor) to a file and then starting a brand new launch with that file (identical to starting a new flight by clicking on the launchpad). I wonder what RealFuels does differently that causes that to happen :/

I just tried it again, and this time it worked perfectly. Strange, because last time I definitely ended up with only kerosene in the tanks, and the volatiles were gone. I'll keep an eye out to see if it happens again.

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I just tried it again, and this time it worked perfectly. Strange, because last time I definitely ended up with only kerosene in the tanks, and the volatiles were gone. I'll keep an eye out to see if it happens again.

Please do and let me know if you see anything like that again. That's not a mod that I want to have incompatibilities with (since I'd like to eventually have support from the Realism folks).

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I can confirm the same issue with most of my rocket builds using RF. No logs as it's never been a big issue (easily fixed by attaching a launch tower). From what I've payed attention to during my builds it feels like the rocket is set on the pad while its being built and all the volatile fuels are boiling off at sea level pressure / temps. With smaller (sounding) rockets it's not a huge issue due to build times being only a few hours to a couple days. Once the larger rockets start going however and build times start inching toward the week+ times the boiloff is rather noticeable.

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I have also seen the boil-off issue with realfuels for the first launch attempt. When my launch inevitably (and spectacularly) fails, and I revert to launch (I'm not that hard mode yet), the fuel levels are topped back off again.

I just checked the RF source code, and it looks like the ModularFuelTank part keeps track of the last time it updated (for bleedoff purposes), and initialises this value if empty during save/load. Therefore when you first save the vessel node for KCT purposes, it stores the Planetarium time at that point.

Then when you launch via KCT once its been built in KCT land, it sees the time delta since it was last updated as being the whole period since building started ... and all the boilables have boiled off.

I've not tried it yet myself (haven't unlocked them in my new career save with realfuels and KCT), but the source + modulemanager configs in realfuels would seem to indicate that if you have launch clamps on your design, they'll automatically refill the tanks.

Timmers

p.s. And yes, I should be doing my RL job and debugging code issues there, and not looking at RF source code :D

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@FreeThinker Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, but doesn't the inventory and part tracker systems cover that? If you recover a part then the next time you use it it takes much less time, and the more often you use a part (through multiple builds) the quicker that part takes to build (representing increased familiarity with the part).

In fact, due to the fact that time increases with the square root of cost, if you only have one line it is always faster to build more at once. If you have two lines you can split the construction in half, scrap them, and then build the whole thing and you MIGHT see a reduction in time (depends on if you were using inventory parts in the first place).

You can already select which line you want things to be on by reordering the constructions in the build list. By default it's first come-first served, but then you can rearrange as needed.

Do you want reused parts to take longer? I actually think there's a way to do that in the time settings, but it won't actually have much effect since you can choose to use new parts each build (after the ScrapYard is implemented then you'd have to pay more each time for new parts and that becomes a feasible gameplay mechanic [pay more for faster builds, or less for slower ones])

Like I said, maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you meant, in which case feel free to correct me :)

Yes you misunder stood me. By brand new I mend part that were recovered by scapping and were never exposed to the higher atmosphere/space and therefore were never actualy been used in drive/flight/orbit. It's like these "virgin" parts, still sit in their protective foam and aren't plagued by microfraction, micro holes, scratches, dents or dust. Idealy this should be visualy represented in the game with textures that show the wear and tear that these parts had to endure (scratches, losing paint job, etc). These part would logicly be easier to assemble than part which have already been exposed to rigors of space. Right now, both parts from recovered rocket parts and virgin part are treated the same in Construction time, which in my view isn't fair or realistic.

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Yes you misunder stood me. By brand new I mend part that were recovered by scapping and were never exposed to the higher atmosphere/space and therefore were never actualy been used in drive/flight/orbit. It's like these "virgin" parts, still sit in their protective foam and aren't plagued by microfraction, micro holes, scratches, dents or dust. Idealy this should be visualy represented in the game with textures that show the wear and tear that these parts had to endure (scratches, losing paint job, etc). These part would logicly be easier to assemble than part which have already been exposed to rigors of space. Right now, both parts from recovered rocket parts and virgin part are treated the same in Construction time, which in my view isn't fair or realistic.

Actually not, the way it is now, new parts have to be build, so they take more time, re-used parts need only to be recovered, fixed or whatever, so they cost a bit less time( adjustable I think).

A separate mechanic is the experience engineers and staff get for building the same parts, each time they're more familiar with said part and cost less time to build it.

The only thing I'm not actually satisfied with the mod, is that when you recover a complete vessel you still have to build it all up again, for example spaceplanes...

But accounting for rockets, its usually a good a idea to reassemble the whole thing. And using the same vessel over and over again does get faster so I can Live with it.

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Well, instead of trying to remember everything I want to do in the future (or saving it in a text document on my desktop, which I am barely on anymore) I decided to put my todo list on GitHub as a series of issues (and I figured out what Milestones are and how to use them!). So now you can see what is on my todo list and can comment on them.

The RealFuels bug is on there and I'll take care of that. So is recovering vessels straight to storage (I need to figure out what to do about fuel levels, I will probably have a GUI that lets you fill things up to whatever level you want [obviously still paying for it], then you can rearrange it as necessary after launch/through edits)

If you view by milestone you can see what I want to get done for 1.1 (I may need to push some of it back if I want to have a release anytime this year...) and for after 1.1. I will add more things as I remember them.

View it here: https://github.com/magico13/KCT/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen

As for making new parts faster than parts that have been to space. I don't think I'm going to end up doing that since it will make recovering parts less of a good thing and will likely require a rewrite of the inventory system, which is definitely not going to be happening (other than with ScrapYard integration). I'm pretty sure you can make recovered parts take longer to build if you really want by reducing the InventoryEffect to less than 1 (but not zero). You could also just disable the Inventory Effect entirely by setting it to 0, meaning recovered parts won't affect anything.

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Well, instead of trying to remember everything I want to do in the future (or saving it in a text document on my desktop, which I am barely on anymore) I decided to put my todo list on GitHub as a series of issues (and I figured out what Milestones are and how to use them!). So now you can see what is on my todo list and can comment on them.

If you view by milestone you can see what I want to get done for 1.1 (I may need to push some of it back if I want to have a release anytime this year...) and for after 1.1. I will add more things as I remember them.

View it here: https://github.com/magico13/KCT/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen

I added a comment on one of the enhancements, but am copying it here for discussion.

If you move down the road of a tech tree, and to avoid duplicating a UI/hassle with a UI, does it make sense to integrate it into the stock tech tree system? Potentially making use of TechManager and/or TED - KSP Tech Tree Editor.

Specifically thinking of something like anonish describes in this post where you could have the KCT tree be and addon to the rest of the overall tech tree. That would require you to progress a certain to certain milestones before various VAB/SPH upgrades can be unlocked.

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On second thought, maybe it's a good idea if volatiles don't replenish without a launch tower. Several RL rockets (mainly military and ex-military) use less efficient but involatile hypergolic fuels so that you don't need to constantly pump chilled fuels into them before launch, such as the Russian Proton rocket. Leaving it as is gives a good reason to use these hypergolic fuels in launch stages until the player unlocks the launch towers.

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How well does this work with a science save? It seems like it would work perfect for the game style I have in mind (meaning sandbox with science reports).

It is fully supported in Sandbox and even more so in Science modes. In a Science save it should work nearly identically as career mode, minus anything involving funds. Meaning simulations won't cost anything, but upgrades are still earned from unlocking nodes and can be purchased using science. I haven't personally played with Science mode, so there may be an extra bug or two. If so, please let me know!

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It is fully supported in Sandbox and even more so in Science modes. In a Science save it should work nearly identically as career mode, minus anything involving funds. Meaning simulations won't cost anything, but upgrades are still earned from unlocking nodes and can be purchased using science. I haven't personally played with Science mode, so there may be an extra bug or two. If so, please let me know!

I shall do so! And as well, I think I'll be streaming on my channel with this. I've been streaming stock parts with only visual enhancers and atmospheric trajectories. This would add a very nice bit of gameplay. I'll definitely keep you in the loop.

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Not sure if this is a bug or a feature...

So I launched my latest craft ensuring that all stages have enough realchutes on to recover. The last dropped stage is the orbital insertion stage so I gave it a NTR, antenna and probe core to allow it to deorbit and hopefully be recovered.

No joy. It just got deleted at 20km as normal.

Was it because it was controllable and therefore a craft instead of a spent stage?

I am thinking of adding another decoupler so once the stage is suborbital I eject the probe core and then it would be recovered.

Would this work?

Is is possible to recover stages with probe cores or would that affect other stuff?

Would getting stagerecovery avoid this issue?

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Well, it will get deleted either way, but you should have received a notification saying that it got recovered as long as the parachutes were actually enough to recover it. What was the periapsis? It's possible that it was no longer considered sub-orbital, but that might not happen until the periapsis is > 70km (I'm not positive where it makes the switch internally)

Having a probe core actually INCREASES the amount of funds you receive, so it's actually a good thing to put a probe on it, so that shouldn't have messed anything up.

Getting StageRecovery might help, but the code they use is nearly identical, so it's likely that the same issue would occur.

If you could turn on Debug Messages in the settings and send me the output_log file if it happens again, I'm curious if there's anything strange going on. Next time keep an eye on the funds counter, if it suddenly goes up when the vessel gets deleted then things are working as intended (or check the inventory before and after).

Edit: Rather than a double post, I will extend onto this one.

I've done a bit of rearranging of goals after realizing that I was going to end up having to rework a lot of stuff immediately after making it. The total simulation overhaul and presets have been pushed back to being in the same update as the upgrade overhaul (I am liking the idea of a tech tree like way of doing that. Either with an extension to the stock tech tree or with my own completely new GUI [not preferred, but then I can charge funds/science/reputation/arbitrary points]). The reason being that I would end up writing all the code for them and then immediately have to rewrite it after overhauling the upgrades. As a result the upgrade overhaul is a bit higher on the priority list now, but is still delegated to after the 1.1 release (which will now focus primarily on vessel rollout and recovery).

As I mentioned in the GitHub issue, landed simulations may find their way into the 1.1 release in some form and I may do some preliminary overhauling of the simulations before the big changes.

Edited by magico13
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I noticed because I wanted to use the parts and they were not recovered. Doing this worked which is why I thought a controlled craft would not be recovered. I separate the orbital insertion stage, set Pe to be negative then stage off the probe core.

37AZJEi.png

I`ll turn on debug and try to repeat it.

EDIT : Suspecting a PEBKAC error as I am unable to duplicate the issue.

Do stages still get recovered if you are not in the flight screen but in the tracking screen?

I shifted to the tracking screen to follow the progress of the spent stage. This time I ran a simulation for speed and so stayed in the flight screen.

I`ll construct a real ship and see if I can repeat the issue. Otherwise, it seems to have fixed itself (Or I have found the correct workflow)

EDIT 2 : Well something happened. The craft was not deleted at 20km, in fact it got to a negative height before it vanished and I could not exit the tracking screen, all buttons for my craft gone.

N7m88GF.png

The vessel was recovered by KCT if I read the log correctly. There is a lot of

[EXC 17:50:59.588] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

SpaceTracking.DrawGUI ()

RenderingManager.OnGUI ()

like pages and pages of it. Might be connected to Remotetech.

Looks like your code is fine and craft are getting recovered though.

Edited by John FX
correctly named tracking screen instead of map.
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So I did a search of the thread and I found some information but it was posted back in september and I just wanted to get a conformation on if it is still true.

I am looking at installing KerbinSide which uses Kerbal Konstructs to add static stuff to Kerbin as well as adding new places you can launch ships from. What I found said that after KCT completes a vessel if you go into the VAB/SPH click the launch button, select your launchpad/runway, go back to the space center, launch your vehicle from the KCT storage tab it will spawn you at the place you selected.

Is this correct? While yes it is a minor inconvenience and support for KK launch site selecting would be awesome, as long as I can still launch from locations other than the KSC I'll be happy lol.

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Do stages still get recovered if you are not in the flight screen but in the tracking screen?

I presume that this is the issue. When you're not in the flight scene, the game unloads A LOT of information which has caused me many headaches in the past. It seems that how I check for probes is likely the issue here. It should work no problems if you remain in the flight scene, but will probably not work properly in the tracking station (or space center) views.

Here is the problem: (((ModuleCommand)module.moduleRef).minimumCrew == 0). You can see that I access the module.moduleRef, which doesn't exist outside of the flight scene. As a result, there's a crash and KCT stops trying to recover anything. It's better than the old days where it would crash your entire game and make you have to restart KSP! :P

I'll see about fixing that up. I might be able to access the info I need from the ConfigNode directly.

Here is the link to the issue I made on GitHub for it: https://github.com/magico13/KCT/issues/15

Is this correct? While yes it is a minor inconvenience and support for KK launch site selecting would be awesome, as long as I can still launch from locations other than the KSC I'll be happy lol.

I have not personally tried this but I am told that it works. I was under the impression that KK was getting a selector in the Space Center scene and that one of the devs (or someone vaguely related to the project) was going to be implementing something directly into KCT and would do a pull request when they were done. I'm under the continued impression that none of those things have happened yet :P I would like to support KK directly at some point, but the priority is very low at the moment (especially because I don't play with it personally, yet)

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Looks like your code is fine and craft are getting recovered though.

Nope. My code is most definitely broken I think.

Yep, just looked at it and that section is outside of the try/catch block. Crap. Definitely will be fixed, or at least less broken, next update. Sorry about that :/

StageRecovery will have the same issue if you use the flat rate model (which is not the default for SR but is what KCT uses). If you use the default Variable Rate model in SR the problem will stop, but you also have to make sure you're going slower than about 6-7 m/s to get high refunds.

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So, I've run into some sort of issue...

I've ported career game from 24.2 right.

The last save I had a really cool spaceplane in production, with some parts of B9 and SP+. So some parts went some serious changes, the cockpit, wings, and specially the elevon1 which became the new standard control surface.

I had to do some hoops even to only get the actual craft file ported.

So to avoid issues, I tried to simply scrap the production on the hangar, this doesn't work clicking 'yes I'm sure' button does nothing. I'm guessing its throwing something like unavailable part and the mod doesn't know what to do.

Trying to edit the vessel gives some error but loads empty hangar, however nothing to do, no buttons work. alt+f4 the exit the game, don't the current state, but I have backups...

Any help on how to troubleshoot this? I'm thinking of skimming the save file and maybe I can just erase this reference. What you think?

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I'd like to see the log file for that so I know precisely what the error is and how to avoid it in the future. I was afraid something like that might happen at some point if people removed mods and still had craft in the list/storage. The fix is relatively simple if you've done anything in the save file before. Just find where the craft is in the SPH storage (ie, it's the 3rd item in the list). This is referred to as SPHWH# (where # is the position in the list, with a zero index, so # = 2 in this example). Just delete the entire SPHWH# section and rename all the later ones (SPHWH3 becomes SPHWH2, SPHWH4 becomes SPHWH3, etc). You'd also need to remove the whole Item {} section from the SPHWarehouse section.

If you get me the log file I can probably just write a quick patch to let you scrap it normally (and get what parts still exist back in your inventory).

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Question: how does KCT interact with RealSolarSystem's KSCSwitcher, and with Kerbtown/Kerbal Konstructs? RSS moves KSC, the latter add new spawn points.

Well, currently KCT does absolutely nothing about them good or bad, but as mentioned a few posts above KCT doesn't break KK, it just requires a bit of workaround to work properly. As for RSS, I haven't tried it so I wouldn't know.

I know that the reconditioning aspect doesn't make any sense with multiple launch sites, but the rollout mechanic that will be added into the next version does to a degree (only allowing one vessel to be rolled out doesn't make sense if they're going to different sites).

I am curious as to what people who have used KCT and those mods together have to say about their compatibility. I do want to add specific support for those systems, but it hasn't been a high priority yet because I haven't had too many requests for it. Regarding RSS support, I hadn't given it much thought since Regex's campaign system was supposed to use a mass based timer for each pad, so KCT wasn't going to end up being paired with RSS in 99% of installs.

I do wonder how KCT should handle multiple launch sites. Should each one have their own build lists and storages? Or should they share all of those and have reconditioning and rollout times for each site instead. The latter is what I would likely do at the moment, at least for KK. RSS' dedication to realism would incline me to have individual build lists and storages per KSC (ones without VABs/SPHs wouldn't have VAB or SPH lines, obviously).

Edit: I did see this message in the RO thread and would like to comment on it. While KCT relies on part cost for determining construction time (well, technically "Build Point" values) all of that information is available in any game mode, not just career. As a result, KCT works perfectly fine in a Sandbox game. The upgrade system relies on the Tech Tree (for now), but in Sandbox mode you're just given a bunch of upgrades (45 to be precise, which is less than what you'd get from a full tech tree + the starting 15) which you can spend however you want. That number can be changed at any time so that users can give themselves more points for completing tasks they feel are worth upgrades (like landing on the Mun, or Duna, or sending a probe to Venus). To me, Sandbox isn't necessarily "Have everything all the time!" but is instead "Play however you want", so KCT is designed to still be played with in Sandbox.

Edited by magico13
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