Deimos_F

I know, which is why I made this suggestion to begin with.

Do you mean body:geoposition? There's no "position" suffix for the "body" structure in the manual. And either way, this solution still involves invoking two different values and performing an operation to get a third value out of them. Not to mention this only works for the current position, not the more useful Apoapsis or Periapsis positions, frequently used in orbital math.

Hi. Not sure where to post feedback/suggestions, but there's a really really simple thing that's bugging me a bit: For calculating certain aspects of spaceflight, most equations are written with "total distance to center of mass" variables, not "distance to surface" variables. So for example, if I'm using the Vis-Viva equation to calculate orbital speed at a point in my orbit, one of my variables is going to be the distance between that point and the center of mass/gravity" of whatever planet I'm orbiting. However there's no simple method in kOS scripts to invoke this number. For example, if I'm trying to calculate what the vessel speed will be at apoapsis, to obtain the true distance between apoapsis and the center of gravity of what I'm orbiting I need to get body:radius and either ship:apoapsis or orbit:apoapsis, add those two into a new variable, and THEN proceed with the calculations. Implementing an item in one of the structures so you could do something like "orbit:trueapoapsis" to get the true distance from the center of gravity would be a tiny yet very noticeable improvement, allowing koders to save some lines of code and not have to get two values separately and then sum them into a new variable. There are many possible ways this could be implemented. Off the top of my head I can think of two distinct ones: - make it so orbit:apoapsis returns the actual total distance to the center of gravity of the currently orbited body, while ship:apoapsis returns distance from apoapsis to surface. It's probably the "cleanest" option but might break a lot of code for a lot of people, which brings me to option 2 - make a new suffix under the ORBIT structure called something like "trueapoapsis" or "total apoapsis", so that the total distance can be gotten directly from it. (I keep mentioning apoapsis, but the implication is that something similar would be done for periapsis) Other than that, can't really think of anything else. Loving kOS despite being very new to it. Keep it up!

Don't forget the "kill" button.

Right now when it comes to rendering connections between vessels in map view, I believe the mod checks for all vessels within range and renders those connections, on a per vessel basis. The problem is, this creates an insane amount of visual cluttering. Would it be possible to instead have only the minimum possible amount of connections get rendered? It would be more like a tree of connections, instead of having an independent line for each individual "in range" pair generating the insane cluttering.

Yep. The issue is, even if you make it really close, it's never perfect, and that's all it takes. Hit the nail on the head.

Jesus Christ that's horrifying. Here I am trying to suggest solutions for a problem I run into about once every two game years, and you live like that? Damn, let's meet up or smth, you need a hug ASAP.

People seem to be missing the point I was trying to make. I'm not complaining about the need to go up into the perfect orbit height. That's part of launching a satellite. Though it is indeed impossible to have a constellation in perfect sync, so the ability to tweak the SMA value for the vessel is essential. And more importantly: THIS is what I was talking about. You can set it up near-perfectly, but if for some reason you need to take control of the vessel it all goes down the drain and it needs to be readjusted. Having an SMA tweaking ability in the mod would mean I wouldn't need to stop everything, shut down the game, go find the persistent save file, back it up, open it, find one of the satellites in that constellation, find its SMA value, copy it, go find every single one of the other satellites on the constellation, overwrite their SMA values, exit the save file, fire up KSP, wait for it to load, load my saved game, and finally go back to what I was doing. And god help you if you ever accidentally switch to one of those vessels, you'll have to do it all over again. Though I quite like something I believe was suggested here: an addition to the tracking station building that would serve to monitor satellite orbits and automatically maintain them. You would need to send your satellites up with extra fuel, which would be slowly deducted over time to simulate the corrections, and when the fuel runs out the satellite can no longer be adjusted and drifts, which may create the need for a replacement.

I install this mod for the added challenge of having to design, launch and setup communication relays, not for the need to fine-tune the orbit of about 12 satellites every 400 in-game days. There's a difference between a game and a simulation, and that difference is where the arbitrary realism line is drawn. There's plenty of things in this game that are not 100% realistic, but as long as there's an underlying plausibility, they are acceptable. For example, in real life the orbits of satellites are closely monitored and adjusted/maintained by dedicated staff, not NASA mission control. So to me, suggesting that micro-managing your entire satellite constellation is a realism feature makes about as much sense as demanding the game to force you to manually drive the fuel trucks up to your rocket to refuel them before launch.

There's something I feel is very necessary in this mod. As is mentioned in the instruction page, getting a constellation of comm sats up in equal circular orbits is basically impossible, due to limitations of the game engine. Yes, one can launch the satellites and position them in near-perfectly identical orbits, but the slight difference in each semi-major axis, that cannot be nullified due to the low precision of flight controls, means the constellation will drift out of shape, and coverage will eventually break. The instructions of the mod suggest we go into the persistent save file, and force equal SMA values for each satellite in the constellation. However, this would need to be redone every single time you have to, for some reason, switch to one of the satellites, as their physics values stop being on rails and the SMA suffers small changes. I think it would be adequate to have a tiny button/menu stowed somewhere in the on-board computer panel that would enable setting, storing, and resetting of the SMA value of the comm sats' orbit. I'm by no means versed in Unity programming, but I would think a simple adjustment of a variable's value would be easy to do. I would like to avoid being forced to install an entire mod (Hyperedit) just to be able to manage my swarm of communications relays without having to leave the game and go save-file tweaking every time I do it. On a related note, I'm bumping a previous suggestion I made:

If you want to tie your ability to progress throughout the system to the tech tree, "exploring a certain body more" basically means grinding.

The cap itself, no, but the fact is, when you shove the extra data in there, the rate skyrockets. It's the amount of stored data, not the cap. The problem is, if you change the data cap to say, 1000, over half of the possible data storage amounts generate insane rates above what should be the maximum, because what is taken into account is the "number" of stored data points, not "number/total". I have tested this, and that's how it works. That's why I've been saying the equation itself needs tweaking in the module.

The problem them becomes the fact that a lot of parts are essential for doing a lot of things. Entire mission profiles are impossible without many high-tier parts. So, as I said, I feel like the tech tree needs to grow, not become stretched. Interstellar mods this very nicely.

Yes, money. There's a science --> funds policy, which allows you to convert 500 science into 50.000 funds. I have two labs on Minmus pumping out 100.000 funds every ~100 days. And to those suggesting the lab needs a nerf because of it easing finishing the tech tree before even leaving Kerbin SOI: that would only make sense if everything stayed the same and the tech tree became bigger. Think about it. Are you going to force people to travel beyond kerbin SOI before they unlock tier 3 engines/fuel tanks?? Makes no sense. We went to the moon in the sixties, using computers that were less powerful than the most humble smartphone. And after all these years and advancements, going beyond "Earth's SOI" is still an extremely daunting undertaking. Finished the tech tree? Use labs to generate funds. Want to take longer to finish the tech tree? I would like it as well, but for now all we can do is use mods.

Try it. The research rate will go through the roof. The module coding needs to be adjusted to adapt to the new storage capacity, and that's the reason this thread exists.

Well, it just crashes. The windows dialogue window pops up stating "this program is not responding" and I have to kill it. No output logs, as it's not a standard KSP.exe "Oops" dialogue window crash. The game just freezes/crashes/stops responding.

You just activate it. It stays deployed. Btw, my previous post got buried under that discussion about cones and range. Any feedback regarding my questions/issue?

What I know was what I read in the MPL's confing file. The module's code probably has all the answers but I have no idea how to analyze it.

\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Squad\Parts\Science\LargeCrewedLab ?

I think I stumbled upon a simple yet serious bug: if you are orbiting a planet, and target something landed on it (say, a rover), and then try to view the rendezvous tab, the game crashes.

I've noticed that, when using the root range mode, plus the suggested 0.5 range modifier, the target selection menu fails to account for the root, and generates false "out of range" warnings. It makes it necessary to switch to each vessel, check what antennas are there, and calculate all the ranges manually. You can then select one of the targets wrongfully identified as out of range, and connections are established normally, but that menu generates confusion. I guess it may be tricky to have the menu calculate the root range, but it could at least check if root and 0.5 range modifier are both in use, and display true range with an asterisk, or something like that. I've also noticed that, if using the on-board computer to pilot a cumbersome vessel (think kerbodyne tanks with Rhino engine, and no RCS), when performing a node maneuver, if the "wobble" makes the vessel spin away from the correct node burn direction, sometimes the throttle controls will stop responding, and the only way to regain control is to go to vessel view and deactivate the engine through the right-click menu, before resetting the on-board computer.

More scientists make research much faster. And all Kerbals level up the same way: doing fly-by's, orbiting, and planting flags on different planets.

I tried doing this myself, but it turns out to be a bit more complicated than I thought, and outside my ability range. The MPL right now, if used optimally, will produce a lot of science. The problem is, the storage capacity is relatively small. While you are conducting inter-planetary flights, you will find yourself having to switch back to your labs tens of times per orbit, just to transmit the science points when they top off, to allow the lab to continue the research. I'm sure trying to make the game execute scheduled operations on vessels other than the active one is really hard, so I tried to work around that. I tried going into the "largeCrewedLab.cfg" file and tweaking the storage capacity of the lab to increase it 10x, but that screwed up the research rate, increasing it by a huge margin. I don't want to buff the lab, only make it less grindy. That increase in research rate seems to have occurred because the calculations for it take into account factors like current stored data vs maximum data storage and current stored science points vs maximum science point storage. There is also a variable in the .cfg file that is labelled as being responsible for adjusting the research rate, but it does not accept decimal adjustments, and increasing or decreasing it by 1 seems to have an enormous effect. So my plan to increase storage as a means of reducing the number of visits the lab needs, failed. It now seems to me there are only ** ways to tweak this: either coming up with a way of draining the science points storage into a secondary storage compartment (module?), which has no effect on the research rate formula, so that you can later go there and transmit its contents; or using my original strategy, but somehow tweaking the formula the game uses to calculate the research rate; or even my original assumption is wrong, and it would not be hard to program the lab to periodically transmit its accumulated science; All these things fall beyond my abilities, and that's why I came here to ask for help. I just don't want to have to stop my flights every 100 days to go back to my lab to empty it out. This is not farmville. For those wondering "why do you need that much science anyway?", I'm playing career mode, and if find using the lab in conjunction with a "science for funds" policy works as a nice and steady small source of extra income. Hope someone can help!

This thread is awesome. Allow me to contribute with some knowledge. This should be featured in the item description, but it is not: when you are processing data to store in the lab to convert into science later, the lab consumes 10 el.charge/second (when you press the yellow button). When the lab is converting data to science, it uses 5 el.charge/second. I am a huge fan of the new MPL, and I'm using it extensively. However I have an issue with it. I wrote this in a post in the subreddit, but I honestly doubt I'll get any feedback there. Allow me to copy paste: Trying to tweak an aspect of the processing lab. Could use help from someone familiar with modding. Also, there's a bug in the lab. The processing lab is amazing. But it has a major flaw: it becomes a place you have to visit often, in a very grindy way. To give you an idea: I'm doing a contract to place a satellite in sun orbit between Dres and Jool. Even before I reached the orbit's apoapsis I've had to stop what I'm doing and go to my research station in Minmus, to transmit the accumulated science points, which had reached maximum capacity, a total of six times. The station has 3 scientists in it, all level 2. This, plus all the other factors, make it so that, with the data storage topped off, I get about 500 science points every 100 days. On a side note, this is where I found the bug. The lab displays a science points per day value, and that value is wrong. I get a value of about 1.8 when the data storage is topped off, yet I'm actually getting almost three times as much daily science. What i want to do is make it so it becomes unnecessary to visit the station so often, just to push the "transmit" button and sit around waiting. I know that getting vessels to perform actions in the background is an extremely tricky thing to mod in this game (here's hoping the shift to the Unity 5 engine / multi-threading in the next update resolves that), so instead of trying to get the lab to transmit its science contents periodically, I dove into the science lab's .cfg file (largeCrewedLab.cfg) and tried to make the lab able to hold ten times more data, and ten times more science, so that I'd be able to leave it running for much longer before needing to transmit. However, this is basically impossible to do without screwing up the lab's research rate. Turns out the amount of science produced per unit of time is calculated based on a complex exponential equation that takes into account, besides the factors like number and level of scientists, the amount of data stored vs maximum storage and the amount of science stored vs maximum storage. This meant that when I tried implementing a maximum storage of 5000 for both categories, I got readings of science production rate of over 3.4/day (and given the bug, the true value was likely much higher). Basically it seems impossible to tweak the storage limits without screwing up things. My question to the more mod-savvy among you is: is there any alternative? Could we, I don't know, implement and additional "module" in the .cfg, and have this module serve simply as a secondary storage? I imagine we could have this storage be triggered by the amount of accumulated science hitting a preset value, like 490 (it never hit's 500, the rate drops to near zero when the lab is full of science), and that would cause it to take the accumulated science and store it, while dropping stored data points into the lab for further processing. I dunno, I might be going the long way around. There might not be a way around. But I really want to try to find it, because having to go through the process of switching vessels every 100 days, simply to empty out the lab, is absurdly grindy. --- The bug seems mostly minor and inconsequential besides an inability to predict outcomes. The real problem is the grind. It takes science back to the constant clicking dynamic. Can't even imagine how bad it gets when you have two or three labs running in diferent locations. Any ideas on how to work around this?