[0.90] Regolith - an open ISRU and Resource framework [0.1.7 - 2015.02.26]

[Kolago]

Picture of your ship please, also is there anything interesting going on in the log?

Here are some pictures and the log:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ou8kks1jp9vtdz4/output_log.zip?dl=0

There are some messages: "The cache doesn't contain the part !"

Maybe DDSLoader again...

[RoverDude]

Yep! There will be pretty API documentation once I kick the bees out

@Kolago - can you humor me and try it without DDS Loader?

[dlrk]

Looks good, got some questions/suggestions:

Will Regolith support KSPI?

Will Regolith support ISRU mods that don't have a 'one resource' model, i.e., will it support a system where you take gases and process them into methane, or take water and process it into O2 and H2?

[RoverDude]

Looks good, got some questions/suggestions:

Will Regolith support KSPI?

Will Regolith support ISRU mods that don't have a 'one resource' model, i.e., will it support a system where you take gases and process them into methane, or take water and process it into O2 and H2?

1. Reverse that first question - will KSPI support Regolith, and that one is up to Fractal_UK (remember, this is a framework meant to be used by modders).

2. Sure, it will support any combination you desire. It's just a matter of wiring it up to make whatever recipe you want.

[goldenpsp]

Looks good, got some questions/suggestions:

Will Regolith support KSPI?

Will Regolith support ISRU mods that don't have a 'one resource' model, i.e., will it support a system where you take gases and process them into methane, or take water and process it into O2 and H2?

I think you are getting the idea of regolith backwards

Edit ninja'd by rover himself

Edited November 18, 2014 by goldenpsp

[dlrk]

Indeed I did, sorry about that.

[JeffreyCor]

This is going to make for a perfect rival to Precious Metals

[riocrokite]

Regolith future balance and scope suggestions:

It would be cool to have an option to remove chance to have an asteroid with karborundum near Kerbin SOI. i.e. chance incrase the further you are from Kerbin. This would encourage setting up asteroid hunting voyages to other planets (yay for OKS). Right now I feel it is too easy to obtain karborundum from asteroids compared to eve/sun/eeloo. After obtaining karborundum from 1-2 asteroids I just set up freighter with torch drive (with IMHO is too op right; should have less isp than smaller karborundum drives) -> go to eeloo -> brings in 1 journey all karborundum I might possibly want in my entire space career.

a) One idea would be to make karborundum only depletable resource among others and in comparatively tiny amounts on planets/moons so asteroids would become only renewable source for karborundum. I don't know whether regolith in its current shape allows for configuring some resources as depletable.

-> i guess an elegant solution would be to make all resources depletable not to 0. So instead of fixed numbers on available resources they would just very slowly decrease concentration in the area where mining is done. Concentration would never fall to 0, it would just decrease exponentially slower. I guess there would be need to implement an internal additional parameter to a resource map - instead of just concentration we would need to have 2 things: initial concentration (is it very large deposit or not) and resources already mined. Having those two arguments framework could calculate and show current concentration. I feel it might be very hard to implement so that this system works properly.

[edit: actually there should be 3 parameters: concentration (speed of mining), size (speed of depletion) and depth (how hard is to extract given resource)]

Other idea could be to make chance of appearing karborundum tied to asteroid class/mass -> A,B,C,D,E i.e. 0.1%, 1%, 5%, 10%, 20% (exponential function related to mass) so realistically only the heaviest asteroids would have karborundum. Therefore it would require from player to build either massive ship(s) to put those behemots into orbit first in order to mine all karborundum out (increasing extraction time from drills would also help in this task). right now i don't need massive dV for putting asteroids into orbit since i can ninja-mine and haul everything valuable before asteroid drift too far away from a planet. But this idea might have some flaws and be abused so it's just my two cents.

It would be also cool to have parameter like the depth of the deposit (so concentration being one parameter that flucuates and depth the second one). i.e. deposit might have high concentration but is very very deep underneath surface of a planet. In effect your mini-drill would be very inefficient because it could only mine from shallow depths (1x multiplier from shallow deposits but like 0.01x from deep ones haha). So for optimal mining you would have to bring heaviest drillls that could reach those depths (and oh boy they would require a lot of energy to operate).

Drills consuming spare parts when mining (exponential function so mini-drill could function years on 1 spare part and big drills would require constant resupply) This would encourage player to expand his MKS base towards either spare parts production or just haul massive amounts of it (tonnage-wise) from Kerbin (yay for calculating economical aspect of given deposit since it requires inputs as well). And what is important spare parts consumption would be calculated based on time and not on resources mined so you would have to calculate whether it's economically suitable to mine low-grade resources since mining low-grade deposits you would loose a lot of money on spare parts.

I would happily see EPL ore->metal->rocketparts conversion using additional inputs so you would have to procure some minerals, water (lots of water like in real production) and maybe substrate to the conversion process. I would also increase generally mining time or decrease mining rate so collecting resources / refining to build a ship would actually take some more time. Plus increasing considerably refining energy usage (realism and some actual utilization for those nice looking solar panels everywhere:) Right now mining and smelting enough materials to build ship is imho too quick and too effortless.

[edit: We could go one step further and have larger drills requiring water to operate (higher temperatures associated with deep mining and need for rapid cooller, you could still operate them without water but they would be much slower). In case we want to extend realism further, a lead time could be implemented since it takes some time to actually drill down to the proper resource.]

[edit:For example 3 large drills or 1 large smelter (50t one) would require more energy to operate than provided by PDU so you either get multiple MKS PDUs / freighter PDU on site or actively manage mining / smelting processes to keep power usage in check. Also this would introduce additional usage for large capacitors /batteries introduced by NFT (discharge at night, recharge from solar panels during day). Right now mining and smelting enough materials to build a ship is imho too quick and too effortless. ]

My last suggestion would be to tie together drill effectiveness with 3 parameters: 1) unmanned/manned and 2) number of kerbals 3) courage of those kerbals (Armageddon movie anyone?). So i.e. cut-off minimum efficiency would be 10% when unmanned or not enough kerbals per 1 drill, 30% with real coward, 100% with real hero and up to 150% when having multiple courageous Kerbals per drill. Something like MKS/OKS module efficiency works right now. It would make sense then to recruit most courageous kerbals for mining tasks In effect you still have an option to mine unmanned; it just requires burning much more time or energy/cash to obtain the same mining results. If you couple that with massively increased drill prices (exponential function, mini-drill being cheap but very limited, 'stock' usi drills reaching optimal efficiency up to medium depths and costing 25k and 20t+ heaviest drills costing a an arm and a leg (i.e. 100k)) and you actually make detailed research and then commitment where do you want to deploy). as for drill-end aspect game would be have to check how many drills are deployed to calculate their efficiencies. If we want we can go one step further and add smelters to this scheme. That could boost usage of of heaviest drills and largest 50t smelters since they would require only one kerbal to operate them efficiently (and landing nicely such a huge smelter and then connecting this to a colony without kas so it doesn't explode is a creative challenge in itself ).

-> adding some more realism to this last idea would be to introduce i.e. MKS mining control (as standard MKS part) with capacity for i.e. 6 kerbals. it would come with multiplier (yaay for spreadsheet fighters!) so kerbal in this structure would have x1 multiplier and every kerbal outside x0.1 (since it is doing other tasks). To avoid low multiplier for small mining missions without mining control structure there could be a rule that the one kerbal with most courage on a given ship has x1 multiplier if there is some sort of lander/capsule present (modules that house at least one kerbal and weigh +0.6t) and the rest x0.1 except when they are in mining control structure. In this way we disable mining control module workaround like mining with separate landers with kerbals attached to them via seats.

[edit: 6 kerbals in mining command module would cause inconsistency (mass/kerbals inside ratio, comparison to other MKS modules as well as capsules), since normal MKS module houses 2 so maybe 2 kerbals with higher multiplier i.e. x3 or 3 kerbals with x2 multiplier would be ideal solution?]

Ok, that was a lot of stuff. I hope it would help designing your framework and add a lot of fun to the future of KSP:)

Edited November 18, 2014 by riocrokite

[peachoftree]

fracking awesome!

badum tiss

[Caelib]

Nice work - the real question is, will the harpoons fire or will it bounce 1km?

Edited November 18, 2014 by Caelib

[SheepDog2142]

Awsome looking cool. Squad needs to make everything you build stock.

[Sophistry]

Thanks; now my RAM is setting fire to cars and barricading the streets, protesting against overworking.

[Oafman]

Thanks; now my RAM is setting fire to cars and barricading the streets, protesting against overworking.

I know right. I'm having to spend a fortune on a new PC, and work out what the hell Linux is, all because of Roverdude and his modding buddies. These people have a lot to answer for...

[SheepDog2142]

Im maxed out rite now on ram use because of the 32bit crap. Im even using open GL and that drops my ram usage by 1GB. 64Bit needs to happen so I can use all 16GB's

[Jivaii]

Thanks; now my RAM is setting fire to cars and barricading the streets, protesting against overworking.

I know right. I'm having to spend a fortune on a new PC, and work out what the hell Linux is, all because of Roverdude and his modding buddies. These people have a lot to answer for...

At 32 gigs of RAM, my computer is wondering what the issue is. And why all I do is tickle it with a feather. (Other then when I do my video work, I almost never see more then 10 gigs of ram usage)

[ExavierMacbeth]

I know right. I'm having to spend a fortune on a new PC, and work out what the hell Linux is, all because of Roverdude and his modding buddies. These people have a lot to answer for...

Hmm. I solved my memory issue and I have 40 mods installed (62 if you include the required extras)

Agressive Active Texture + Forced opengl = 2.2-2.8gb memory footprint

[ExavierMacbeth]

At 32 gigs of RAM, my computer is wondering what the issue is. And why all I do is tickle it with a feather. (Other then when I do my video work, I almost never see more then 10 gigs of ram usage)

Unless your running the buggy as heck 64bit exe, Kerbal will only use 3.5gb before crashing due to out of memory errors.

[SheepDog2142]

Hmm. I solved my memory issue and I have 40 mods installed (62 if you include the required extras)

Agressive Active Texture + Forced opengl = 2.2-2.8gb memory footprint

Im doing that but it still crashes anytime I try to load a rocket or come out of a building

[goldenpsp]

I know right. I'm having to spend a fortune on a new PC, and work out what the hell Linux is, all because of Roverdude and his modding buddies. These people have a lot to answer for...

Hmm, Im running all of Rovers mods plus FAR KAS Robotics TACLS EPL and some others and still fits in 32bit.

[Beale]

Great! It feels a bit like the proposed stock resources system.

I want to get making some parts for this I really like the Philae-esque stuff included also.

I have a question for the future... Will it remain mainly lightweight, for people to build from? (I.E. limited part selection / resources in vanilla distribution).

[Oafman]

Hmm, Im running all of Rovers mods plus FAR KAS Robotics TACLS EPL and some others and still fits in 32bit.

All of those plus things like B9, KSPi and NF are pushing me close to the line, even with ATM. I already have a game loading time > 6 minutes. And I can't use OpenGL due to a substandard work laptop GPU.

I basically want all these awesome mods and more, and can only do this with a major hardware upgrade and an overdue familiarisation with Linux. So yeah, our talented modders are giving me a bit of a headache, but of course also making KSP into almost limitless fun

[SheepDog2142]

All of those plus things like B9, KSPi and NF are pushing me close to the line, even with ATM. I already have a game loading time > 6 minutes. And I can't use OpenGL due to a substandard work laptop GPU.

I basically want all these awesome mods and more, and can only do this with a major hardware upgrade and an overdue familiarisation with Linux. So yeah, our talented modders are giving me a bit of a headache, but of course also making KSP into almost limitless fun

This is true I have a 2 month old $1200 PC I built and Kerbal still causes it to crash due to the 32bit format.

We asa a community wil be restricted until Squad figures out how to get the game into 64bit

Also think of the new things modders will do when not limited by things like a 32bit game. I want to Max all 16gbs of ram and both R9 290 cards and make my SSD scream with KSP awsomeness

[goldenpsp]

This is true I have a 2 month old $1200 PC I built and Kerbal still causes it to crash due to the 32bit format.

We asa a community wil be restricted until Squad figures out how to get the game into 64bit

Also think of the new things modders will do when not limited by things like a 32bit game. I want to Max all 16gbs of ram and both R9 290 cards and make my SSD scream with KSP awsomeness

If only it were up to squad.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Lol we should probably get back on topic before Rover yells at us for derailing his thread

One of these days I will be able to actually test one of his asteroid mods... Have to learn how to stop colliding with them on rendezvous first though

[goldenpsp]

Lol we should probably get back on topic before Rover yells at us for derailing his thread

One of these days I will be able to actually test one of his asteroid mods... Have to learn how to stop colliding with them on rendezvous first though

Well to be fair this one isn't an asteroid mod. We just have asteroid parts to test with.