PocketBrotector

Hey, thanks for this neat mod. Couple of comments/questions... Do the nodes on the fuel tank and heat shield seem oddly placed to anyone else? They work fine with each other, but if any other part is stacked with them, they will clip through or leave large gaps. I like look of the vernier engines - is there any chance of a five-way version that has the missing top-facing nozzle? I know it starts to get away from the inspiration material, but it would provide an aerodynamic-looking LFO-based RCS port suitable for both upper and lower stages - there aren't many mods that offer that combination of qualities in a part.

Thanks all. Added license info to the readme and version info to the topic name. CKAN may come later; I haven't used it before so I'll have to read up on the metadata process. On balance... As I see it, the stock antenna progression is balanced by mass and bulk. More advanced antennas come later in the tech tree and are heavier, which makes them more significant as a payload; and they're bulkier, requiring wider rockets to launch. Taken together, the mass and bulk also means that relays are more likely to be used on appropriate craft (dedicated sats or a CSM) and less likely on unconventional relay craft (landers, rovers, planes, etc.) Each successive antenna is about double the mass of the previous, and one step up in diameter (.625, 1.25, 2.5m) which means they fit neatly into the truss system in fairings of larger launchers (1.25, 2.5, and 3.75m respectively.) This mod extends the progression as simply as possible, which is appropriate as the KSP mod ecosystem provides both the need (larger solar systems) and means (bigger launchers) to do so. So the antennas continue to double in size and grow steadily more powerful to reach more distant destinations, but they need bigger and bigger launchers/fairings to accommodate them (5m, 7.5m, and 10m are all more or less community standards). Big launchers probably aren't uncommon among the large-solar-system crowd, but I'm sure there are some who don't want to use them. And in any case, the progression to larger launchers probably isn't perfect; a 3.75m stack is already overpowered to get a trio of RA-100 satellites to orbit. So the compact antennas are offered as an alternative; they deploy to the same size but fit in a much smaller space for launch. (Communotron 88-88 is roughly 8 times wider when deployed than stowed, so e.g. a version that's only 1.25m wide stowed is easy to launch but expands to 10m deployed). They're the same mass, and when deployed they're even the same bulk, so they're balanced using the same progression as stock - they just don't require oversized launchers. This scheme has the advantage of leaving the stock antennas untouched, so that you don't have to mess with the balance or challenges associated with setting up a relay to e.g. Duna or Jool just because you install OPM, etc. @Snark summarized this pretty well over on the JX2 thread - offering bonus performance on existing alternatives tends to trivialize stock-scale relay networks without offering any more depth to make up for it. If the bonus performance is implemented as a PartUpgrade, stock balance is still tossed out - it just takes a bit longer to happen. Also, the stock tech tree only really has one node, Large Probes, available to extend the antenna progression, and CTT doesn't add any more nodes in that line either - so more powerful antennas ought to be differentiated by mass and bulk, as there's no room left in the tree to differentiate by technological advancement.

It's the combined and updated version of everything I've provided to date (and looking back, I think I'm the only one who's been providing patches). So if you just have DIRECT itself and this, you'll have everything I have. If you want to use LH2, you'll want CryoEngines; and if you have CTT, you'll want the DIRECT_CTT patch I linked to above. EDIT: combined all support patches and moved them to here

I have added some interstage nodes (with accompanying truss) to the DIRECT fairings, with the help of @IronCretin's fairing node calculator. The combined maintenance patches I've provided can be found here, with a Community Tech Tree support patch here. EDIT: Combined patches and moved to here

New release on GitHub: Okay, but the entire stock system is only about 1AU in radius... I suppose estimating Kerbal interstellar distances are left as an exercise for the modder.

*pushes up glasses* But clearly 60m would be size11... Size Diam Increase 00 0.3125 0 0.6250 0.3125 100% 0p5 0.9375 0.3125 50% 1 1.2500 0.3125 33% 1p5 1.8750 0.6250 50% 2 2.5000 0.6250 33% 3 3.7500 1.2500 50% 4 5.0000 1.2500 33% 5 7.5000 2.5000 50% 6 10.0000 2.5000 33% 7 15.0000 5.0000 50% 8 20.0000 5.0000 33% 9 30.0000 10.0000 50% 10 40.0000 10.0000 33% 11 60.0000 20.0000 50% On a more serious note, thanks for your bulkheadProfiling work. It's interesting to see how usage drops off in progressively larger sizes - 3.75m capsules aren't uncommon, which means there are some mods with 5m launchers, but not very many with 7.5m, and @NecroBones is the only person I know of who's working on 10m+ packs. As that's approximately the size of the largest rockets ever successfully flown in the real world, hopefully we won't need to bust out size9+ profiles anytime soon.

Should be pretty easy with a 10m launcher, of course, but kind of annoying otherwise. At any rate, I suspect we're close to the point at which it doesn't make sense to keep scaling up stock dishes. If we extend the current progression another four steps, we'd have a 40m dish weighing 83 tons with a range exceeding 7.8 quadrillion meters... which is still shy of the interstellar relay from Kerbol StarSystems, apparently.

"Small..." . The biggest one here is almost ten meters wide - I should probably put it on a rover and see how it looks next to those tracking station dishes! As threatened, @MaxL_1023... RA-12500 on the highest level of a 10m fairing truss. Not as quite as big as the tracking station dishes, unfortunately... Looks like those are about 30 or 40 meters across.

Per a suggestion from the folks over at Galileo's Planet Pack, y'all might be interested in the following:

Per a suggestion on the Galileo's Planet Pack thread, you folks might be interested in this:

Created separate thread per request:

Current Release (GitHub) This mod adds long-range antennas using stock assets to facilitate communications networks for planet packs larger than the stock solar system. This allows the player to extend, rather than replace, the stock antenna progression, making long-range relays possible without trivializing inner-system communications. The RA-500 weighs 1.3 tons and has range rating of 500 Gm. It has a 1.25m bottom node and fits in a 5m fairing (i.e. it's a 2x rescaled RA-15.) The RA-2500 weighs 2.6 tons and has a range rating of 2.5 Tm. It has a 2.5m bottom node and fits in a 7.5m fairing (i.e. it's a 2x rescaled RA-100.) The RA-12500 weighs 5.2 tons and has a range rating of 12.5 Tm. It has a 2.5m bottom node and fits in a 10m fairing (i.e. its a 4x rescaled RA-15.) As an incidental benefit, these antennas offer progressively better transmission performance than the stock relay antennas, particularly in terms of ElectricCharge consumed per Mit transmitted. The enormous size of these antennas demands an unconventional approach to deployment. Possibilities include: Off-world manufacturing via mods such as Extraplanetary Launchpads, OSE Workshop, or Ground Construction. Oversized launch vehicles such as AB Launchers (5m), DIRECT (5m & 7.5m), or SpaceY Lifters/SpaceY Expanded (5m, 7.5m, & 10m). To facilitate the simultaneous launch of multiple satellites, this mod adds stock fairings (including interstage trusses) resized to 5m, 7.5m, and 10m diameters. In case none of the above appeal to you, compact deployable versions of all three antennas are provided (via rescaling of the Communotron 88-88 to 0.625m, 0.9375m, and 1.25m.) As the new antennas are substantially more powerful than the stock Deep Space Network, three additional levels of the Tracking Station are provided via the Custom Barn Kit (not included.) These allow the player to choose between launching local relays or simply boosting the DSN. Level 4 of the Tracking Station costs 2,111,000 Funds and boosts the DSN's range rating to 1.25 Tm. Level 5 of the Tracking Station costs 7,916,000 Funds and boosts the DSN's range rating to 6.25 Tm. Level 6 of the Tracking Station costs 29,685,000 Funds and boosts the DSN's range rating to 31.25 Tm. This presents alternatives at several performance points to the excellent JX2 Large Deployable Antenna. These parts are generally cheaper and less massive than the JX2 for their range with the trade-off of being much bulkier and far less visually distinctive. As a bonus, I've included a half-scale version of the RA-2 antenna that has the stats of the HG-5. This alternate handle-free form factor for the HG-5 fits better on compact probe assemblies as small as 0.3125m. Also included for launching miniature relays is a 0.625m fairing; I recommend RLA Stockalike for 0.625m launch vehicles. Installation and Requirements To install, copy the files to your GameData folder. This mod requires ModuleManager (not included.) Custom Barn Kit is required for the extended tracking station progression, but otherwise optional. License CC BY-NC-SA

Thanks for the warm response folks! The current balance is strictly a mathematical progression - totally agnostic to the solar system or use-case. Each antenna is one step up in size & has 2x mass and 5x range of the previous antenna; each DSN level has 5x the range and costs 3.75x more than the previous. Barnkit feedback is appreciated as I didn't actually test that part yet... Will do! "Small..." . The biggest one here is almost ten meters wide - I should probably put it on a rover and see how it looks next to those tracking station dishes! Then if you want, I can keep extending the progression until I get one that's bigger. Might be hard to launch though...

With the advent of ultra-distant bodies in popular planet packs, perhaps this will be of use: Extended Antenna Progression Testing welcome. If this is useful I will spin it off into its own thread, but given that GPP is the only solar system I'm aware of with bodies in the terameter range, I figured I would introduce it here.

From the 2013 article about overhauling the space center way back in .21: Whole article is worth a re-read to remind ourselves that these things have been under discussion for years. Lots of good notes on the art style in there. Edit: and the rest of that section...

Read the last few posts.

Well, those were just the first examples that I could think of... I'm sure there are other mods out there that use Water as well. Maybe the best option would be a patch in the Extras folder for water? That way the player could choose explicitly if they want it upon installation. Looking forward to seeing how all the cool revised parts fit together in game. Does the Mk4-1 shroud still let us see out of that downward-facing lander window? And what kind of legs are on that lander?

Thanks, I didn't realize it was associated with MKS instead of USILS (I've completely given up on following the MKS thread due to the volume of discussion there.) Looks like any updates I want to provide are going to have to wait until I have a long stretch of quality time to spend interpreting that spreadsheet.

Now that Mk4 includes cryo-support for its tankage and Cutlass engine, it seems that it would be good to have the ability to store LH2 or LH2O in procedural wings, since those are popular for use with Mk4 spaceplanes and can already be configured to carry LF/LFO/MP. The below should support both of the procedural wing mods maintained by @Crzyrndm, though I've only tested it with B9 Procedural Wings. Everything seems to be working fine with e.g. fuel ratios and boil-off. Note that these wings aren't ZBO tanks, so they should be probably set to a high fuel priority so that they drain before any true cryogenic storage. @Nertea, if this is acceptable for inclusion in the mod's general distribution, I can submit a PR for it. I presume it would be distributed with CryoEngines since it's more closely related to CryoTanks than to Mk4.

The second problem sounds like a solution to the first problem. Or, if you prefer, fixing the second problem would exacerbate the first problem. Admittedly I've never minded this much, because it's never occurred to me to go beyond LKO without some means of generating electricity.

I dunno if this is alluding to something real, but a CobaltWolf/Nertea collaboration would be a game-changer.

Just as an FYI, I'm pretty sure that all of the USI-LS patches I provided are out of date. USI-LS underwent some significant changes to both its config structure and its balance a few months ago. I don't think RoverDude has yet provided updated balance guidelines or else I would submit pull requests... the last time I checked he was still putting finishing touches on it before publishing so that compatibility supporters would not have to revise repeatedly. I don't know if it's planned or even on the horizon, but a few of these station parts could use a balance touchup more generally (e.g. the probe cores were overweight the last time I looked). I had some notes with suggested values that I can present if desired, but I don't want to be a pest since I know the mod's development is in maintenance mode...

I have submitted a pull request to the CryoTanks repository for this patch. @StahnAileron - I'm sure there's interest out there for a realistic fuel cell among the Realism Overhaul crowd, but I see an LH2/O fuel cells as basically filling in the gaps of the stock+cryo paradigm. I'm pretty sure stock fuel cells are supposed to be running on hydrogen and oxygen, implemented as LiquidFuel and Oxidizer. Stock LiquidFuel is an abstraction of several different substances: aviation fuel, some kind of rocket fuel, and (liquid) hydrogen; the hydrogen part can be seen in the Nerv, fuel cells, and possibly ISRU... though ISRU itself involves another layer of hand-waving. The CryoTanks "suite" separates out the LqdHydrogen aspect for nuclear and cryogenic chemical engines, etc. So while a LqdHydrogen/Oxidizer fuel cell is unrealistic, it's unrealistic in a way that matches the rest of the stock+LqdHydrogen system. There's some wiggle room between the two perspectives, though, because real-world hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells produce water as a useful byproduct. Water doesn't exist in stock KSP, but it's used in mods both realistic (TAC Life Support) and abstract (MKS). @Nertea - would it be acceptable for the LH2/Ox converter in the CryoTanks patch to produce Water as an additional output? It would be optional via DumpExcess = true, and it's already a CRP resource, so there would be no downside for folks who don't need it.

The 2.5m aviation tanks have a cryogenic LH2/O option, which is nice. They do however obviate the CryoTanks foil tanks, as they have the same stats except for being way cheaper and having a much higher impact tolerance.

Would there be any interest in creating a fuel cell that runs on LqdHydrogen+Oxidizer? This could be a Near Future Electrical (or Spacecraft) feature that relies on CryoTanks, in the same way that the LH2 RCS is implemented in Near Future Propulsion. (Though I am not sure if it should run on the CryoEngines mass ratio of 4.7:1 or the real-world mass ratio of 7.94:1.) In conjunction with the LH2/Ox RCS that I saw proposed on GitHub, and the existing LH2 Cutlass option from Mk4, this would bring LqdHydrogen into full feature parity with stock LiquidFuel. (Imagine the PR benefits of a space program with neither fossil fuels nor toxic monopropellant! Just ignore all of that enriched uranium we keep strapping to our rockets...)