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[1.12.x] Alcubierre Warp Drive (Stand-alone)

RoverDude

By RoverDude
in KSP1 Mod Releases

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Dobelong

Dobelong

Posted
Posted

Just tried this mod and I can assert its absolutely phenomenal with galaxies unbound 

that being said does anyone have any tips for actually getting into orbit of another panet without burning a huge amount of deltaV? Usually I’m passing by way too fast to slow down.

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capi3101

capi3101

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Dobelong said:

Just tried this mod and I can assert its absolutely phenomenal with galaxies unbound 

that being said does anyone have any tips for actually getting into orbit of another panet without burning a huge amount of deltaV? Usually I’m passing by way too fast to slow down.

The trick is to put yourself on a trajectory directly towards or directly away from Kerbol at relatively close range, then watch your relative speed to target (the target being where it is you want to go). When you're at a relative velocity close to the orbital velocity at your destination, you can warp there directly. If your relative velocity starts to creep upward again, you can either warp from there or reposition yourself over Kerbol such that the relative velocity starts to go back down again. 

I have a YouTube video on navigating with the mod that's a few years old now; largely still applicable. I'll have to find the link again...


EDIT: Here we go. I apologize for the quality; at the time I recorded it on the best terminal I had available to me...which was my work computer. Not designed for gaming even back then. Can't play KSP on it any more...

The stock power requirements have increased significantly since the video was made, incidentally. You can read about those in the video's comments.
 

 

 

Edited by capi3101
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capi3101

capi3101

Posted
Posted (edited)
53 minutes ago, Dobelong said:

It seems that the 0.625m drive generates huge amounts of drag even when stowed in a cargo bay or fairing. Is this intentional or a bug?

Bug. Been there a while. Not just the 0.625m drive. The Alcubierre Drive doesn't handle atmo well at all - had an Alcubierre-equipped probe (0.625 meter engine again) that I attempted to deorbit once. Thing sped up when it hit the atmo until it blew up. Tried the flight again with a pair of 10 meter heat shields attached. Slowed down until it stopped slowing down, then the stupid thing held velocity until the heat shields exploded, then it sped up again anyway...

It's called "exotic matter" for a reason, I guess...

Not sure if I ever reported the behavior or not. That was a few versions back and when it happened I failed to grab my log file; no log file, tough dooky (as it should be).

EDIT: I made the exotic matter quip as a joke, but out of curiousity does it do the same thing if you empty the tank first?

Edited by capi3101
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Dobelong

Dobelong

Posted
Posted (edited)

 

38 minutes ago, capi3101 said:

Bug. Been there a while. Not just the 0.625m drive. The Alcubierre Drive doesn't handle atmo well at all - had an Alcubierre-equipped probe (0.625 meter engine again) that I attempted to deorbit once. Thing sped up when it hit the atmo until it blew up. Tried the flight again with a pair of 10 meter heat shields attached. Slowed down until it stopped slowing down, then the stupid thing held velocity until the heat shields exploded, then it sped up again anyway...

It's called "exotic matter" for a reason, I guess...

Not sure if I ever reported the behavior or not. That was a few versions back and when it happened I failed to grab my log file; no log file, tough dooky (as it should be).

EDIT: I made the exotic matter quip as a joke, but out of curiousity does it do the same thing if you empty the tank first?

Ah, I didn't consider that exotic matter might be the problem. I'll have to give that a try. 
Edit: It's not possible to drain exoticmatter before launch, and draining xenon didn't change anything. The drag is still extremely high.
Just curious, has anyone else replicated this situaiton (trying to get a warp drive to orbit in a mk2 cargo bay or a fairing using something with fairly low TWR like an SSTO?)

Edited by Dobelong
Tested the drive as said
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  • 2 weeks later...
Gordon Fecyk

Gordon Fecyk

Posted
Posted
On 9/3/2021 at 11:16 AM, Dobelong said:

Just curious, has anyone else replicated this situaiton (trying to get a warp drive to orbit in a mk2 cargo bay or a fairing using something with fairly low TWR like an SSTO?)

I gave up on that some time ago, and got another add-on to build the things in orbit:

Spoiler

 

 

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Atlessa

Atlessa

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 9/3/2021 at 6:16 PM, Dobelong said:

 

Ah, I didn't consider that exotic matter might be the problem. I'll have to give that a try. 
Edit: It's not possible to drain exoticmatter before launch, and draining xenon didn't change anything. The drag is still extremely high.
Just curious, has anyone else replicated this situaiton (trying to get a warp drive to orbit in a mk2 cargo bay or a fairing using something with fairly low TWR like an SSTO?)

I know it's a late reply but  I just reinstalled this mod, noticed the issue, remembered JadeOfMaar had already created a custom config file a few pages back and went to test if that still works.  It does.

 

Here's a download link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tAqJY3oIBeO4biEs6y6Zc97I6K7jsTZY/view?usp=sharing

Here's the post in case you don't trust random download links:  

And if you wanna use your own Mk1 Eyeballs,  it's on page 63, posted 17.12.2019

 

Put the file anywhere in GameData and it should work  (and of course if you copy the code from JadeOfMaar's post you need to put it in a file, name it whatever you want and make sure to change the ending to .cfg)

 

@RoverDude  Do you think you could include the config file in the download package?  

Edit: fixed file permissions for the download link just now.

 

Edited by Atlessa
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KSPPhoenixFlyer

KSPPhoenixFlyer

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 6/21/2017 at 3:34 AM, luxor00 said:

 


Thanks for the let.
The ship is not big, let's say it fits in size 15 bubble.
I have the RCS turned off.
For greater stability - I have one reaction wheel. Unfortunately it's near the center of mass, I'll test putting on one end.

I changed the position of the reaction wheels (with the acceptable value of 300), 1 isolated at the top and then another at the bottom, in either case the stability problem remains

What gave rise to the stability problem was the upgrade to 1.3
The ships that were stable began to "tip" at the launch side (even at very low speeds) and to become unstable in space.
The attempt for altered reaction wheels in values is an attempt to overcome the problem that has arisen.

Without the alcubierre engine, the spacecraft is perfectly stable in space and upon rising. When setting the engine, the ship "falls" to the side between 1000m and 5000m even at low speed.

Hey @luxor00 I have figured out that the way to at least get rid of the drag is to delete or rename the file in GameData\UmbraSpaceIndustries\WarpDrive\Assets named WarpBubble.mu With out this file you dont get the visual bubble around the ship but the warpdrive will still work with out the drag bug that has been plaguing me forever on this.

Edited by Gargamel
Fixed Misquote by Poster
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schlosrat

schlosrat

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hey I'm getting a weird issue where any time I've got a vessel with an Alcubierre drive on it and some other "normal" rocket motor my burn times are invariably red.

The vessels I see this with have an Alcubierre drive as well as another drive, and I use action groups to switch one off and the other on so that switching on the Alcubierre drive always shutdowns any normal reaction motors, and vice versa - so both are never active at the same time.

With such vessels, when the normal motor is on and the warp drive is shutdown, if I plan a maneuver the burn time is shown as red no matter how much fuel/delta-V I've got. When I execute the burn it progresses normally, but the dang things shows red all the way.

For ships built without a warpdrive this is not a problem and I get a green burn time indicator when I should. In the shot below you can see my vessel is almost done with its orbit circularization burn, and it's been red the whole time. The tank is nearly full with astrophage (correct fuel for the motor in use). I get this same effect with any type of reaction motor - chemical, nuclear, kerbstein, OPT DarkDrive, etc.

qLFDmbI.png

Here's a shot that shows the ship, and shows the Astrophage engine working

C87UagT.png

It appears KSP thinks the active engine has 0 deltaV (as shown in the staging on the lower left in the image above), but when I check with MechJeb it shows I've got plenty (as in 302265352 m/s, could burn for up to 238d 2h 6m 29.6s)

Edited by schlosrat
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JadeOfMaar

JadeOfMaar

Posted
Posted

@schlosrat Don't keep the warp drive in the same stage with chemical engines. The dV calculator doesn't like it when you have engines with different Isp in the same stage. And you don't want to fire reaction engines with warp drive at the same time anyway. If you could, you'd just be making more trouble for yourself when you warp out at the target body. In orbital mechanics, the slightest dV used at point A can have a huge impact on your situation at or near point B.

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schlosrat

schlosrat

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, RoverDude said:

@schlosrat - likely stock really has no idea of handling the shenanigans this drive does.

Oh I agree! I think at one point years ago I made the mistake of giving MechJeb a maneuver command while my warpdrive was active - not effective.

The thing is, stock doesn't need to know about the warp drive if it's in a different (later) stage and in a shutdown state. Stock works just fine with motor A (active) in current stage and motor B (shutdown) in a later stage, except when motor B is a warpdrive.

In the example above motor A is an astrophage engine, which does have a ludicrous ISP, but is in all other respects like other drives stock does know about. This same thing happens with any other normal drive, chemical, nuclear, ion, OPT Dark Drive, etc.

The weirdness is that with a warpdrive that's shutdown and in another stage, stock still can't figure out burn time for the one engine that is activated - but it does so just fine if there's no warpdrive in the vessel.

Am I doing something wrong, or is everyone seeing this same effect?

Maybe it's some weird interaction with one of the many mods I've got. If others aren't seeing this, then it's time for me to painstakingly cycle through tests until I find which other mod is causing this, but if it's the normal and expected thing then that would be a pointless waste of time and I'll just live with it.

7 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@schlosrat Don't keep the warp drive in the same stage with chemical engines. The dV calculator doesn't like it when you have engines with different Isp in the same stage. And you don't want to fire reaction engines with warp drive at the same time anyway. If you could, you'd just be making more trouble for yourself when you warp out at the target body. In orbital mechanics, the slightest dV used at point A can have a huge impact on your situation at or near point B.

Yep, that's exactly what I've been doing. Stage 0 is a reaction motor, and Stage 1 is the warp drive. I use action groups to toggle between them so that both are never active at the same time, but both can be off. It's either motor A, Motor B, or no motors active.

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Foefue

Foefue

Posted
Posted

Hey my mod seems to be bug, every time I drag out a warp drive engine from the part section, it keeps playing the start engine animation where the ring folds out, i have no idea why it keeps doing this!

Engine isnt even on and its deployed for some reason screenshot243.png

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