Hazelnut

Yes, but remember that it burns Deuterium & Tritium at the same rate no matter what the throttle/thrust/isp. I find that balancing the main fuel usage without going too low on thrust or too inefficient on D/T usage is what I have in my mind for each maneuver. - - - Updated - - - Do you have the mod code on github? Maybe help in the form of patches submitted may help progress and your time constraints? Just a thought.

The orbit is stable at 200,500 m not degrading in any short time frame. (maybe after years, but Jool atmo starts at 200km so i am just above in the traces) Why would a plasma thruster be needed? I don't see how it would help. Loading all scooped resources is not happening, what should trigger that? I did test at Kerbin first. Didn't test the non-focussed time warp behavior though. Tested that the scoop was useful even above the atmo cutoff in the traces... because if this craft dips into the official atmosphere it has no way to get back out.

This plan looks like a bust, after 25+ days time warping back at the space center I switched back to the Endurance and it has no more Hydrogen than it started with. Seems the atmo scoop doesn't work unless you have focus, but at 200km orbit I cannot warp more than 100x so that will take a long time at 4/s to refill 260,000 H. (1000+ minutes real time) Is it supposed to work when time warping without focus? The AM collectors do, and I have 5g of AM now. This is pretty disastrous for me TBH. I can always calculate what I should get and edit the save file I suppose. :-)

So spent a few days getting some nice shots of Endurance mk2, hope you like it. Currently refueling in a 200km orbit of Jool... not really sure how effective/long that will take. It's quite ironic that this mk2 has beaten the mk1 to Jool even though it visited Eve first. Used a whole lot more fuel though. I almost have flags on all of the basic KSP bodies, then it's onto the outer planets mod.

Erm, any chance of an explanation? Sounds kinda bad to me... :-)

Thanks, glad you like it. The precoolers have not moved, they're clipped into the fuel tanks between the intakes and the Turbojets since I didn't have any mk2 parts except the adapter for LH2. Couldn't figure out how to get enough fuel onboard without mucking up the look of it any other way, and I tried lots of variants. (this one was 5b) I know the engines overheat because I did the first third of the ascent with closed intakes so the precooler was not working and they overheated rather quick. (bit odd that they worked with closed intakes...) Hmm, didn't consider using a radiator - since the heating is from the superheated air flowing all around I figure it wouldn't help much TBH. WOuld be interested if anyone's tested that. Eve's atmo is quite the thing! :-) Taking off from Kerbin is a doddle by comparison. One of the design goals/constraints was the only fuel it would have is LqdHydrogen. (and Monoprop obv.) The reason for this is that's what the Endurance uses and has 340,000 units of, so it can re-fuel Intrepid. I didn't want to add different fuels basically, and the thrust while LH2 lasts is raised from 80kN to 235kN which is plenty. The other main constraint was that it had to have a 2.5m Sr docking port in middle at the back and not have a mass of more than 18t. I'm very happy with how it turned out, and will only change it if I can replace the 1.25m fuel tanks with an inline mk2 tank to remove the clipping cheatyness. ;-) I took a look at the VASIMR and I will use it at some point but I felt it was the wrong look for this spaceplane, so discarded it. I do love being able to maneuver using QV even after the LH2 is all used up. Used 20% slowing down to land and 75% to get up to orbit so I think I judged the amount of LH2 required pretty well.

The Intrepid mk2 is complete! Managed to escape Eve legit (i.e. not switching off temp damage) although it took a few tries to get the ascent profile right. Love the fact that I completed a contract for an Eve base with it too. (That's why it has a crew cabin which was not in the original plans. Feedback welcome - will post mk2 of Endurance once it's done. Here's an album of the Eve launch: Here's a labelled construction shot, feel free to ask any questions:

You can do it, but I found it less than satisfactory because the braking performance was terrible. Give it a try and see...

That depends what you use them for. On my atmo plane (Intrepid) I used an AM reactor scaled down to 1.25m because it was the only one that could produce enough power for the thrust I wanted in such a small space. Also it hardly uses any AM when engines are not running so it will last for a long time with the 10g of AM it can store. Also it has some small 1.25 collectors to top up if necessary. For contsant high power applications a big fusion reactor is better.

EDIT: D-D mode is not listed for Dusty BTW. (I assume you added this since I built the JE, because it certainly didn't have this option at the time) Because I also only have a tiny amount of Deuterium left on the Dusty based Jool Explorer, and there's an Endurance mk1-beta called Endeavour on it's way to replace it. To be honest I didn't realise that the stock rads and the KSPI rads were so different and the stock rads are pretty terrible for the KSPI reactors. I should have waited to unlock the KSPI rads before launching. Many times when switching to this craft all the rads explode because they clip into each other which was only way to get enough on for the Dusty to allow 2-3 mins of VISTA use before it throttles. It was a good experiment, but completely outclassed by the Endurance class ships. Glad you liked em. I will finish the mk2 versions soon and post more detailed & labelled shots.

I know this so well. Don't miss out on time with kids though, they grow up really fast! (my youngest is now almost 12 8-o)

Well took a bit of effort but I finally got some older shots onto imgur. Will do some more recent ones soon as mk2 versions are finished. (onto last tests now) SOme of the shots are very dark, but there is detail on them if you turn up the brightness a bit and look at the full res versions. Hope people find them interesting, very curious to see what others think of 'em. I tried to add enough explanation, but feel free to ask any questions.

I think it needs to be better than stock, but it would be interesting to see how others find it before you balance it. Didn't make much difference to me, I get same thrust at same ISP as I did when limiting to 33%, just don't have the option of more thrust for less ISP now. No new campaign until 1.1 is out for me. I will be visiting all bodies (outer planets mod) then I will be done until 1.1 is out I think. Will post some shots of my mk1 craft later, and mk2 in next day or two.

I think on the whole the mod is fairly well balanced. After a bit more play, seems to me the cost of AM & Tritium are actually about right. Launching some of my designs quickly took me down from 12m to around 4m money. The science lab is overpowered IMO with its ability to store double the data than standard lab and the increase in sci return rate that accompanies that. It's nice but kinda completely obsoletes the base sci labs. I think it's produced about double the science that all my 7 stock labs have since its been running, although part of that is having 4* scientists rather than 2*. The biggest obsticles to use in this mod is knowing what everything does and how to use it, the descriptions are ambiguous, incomplete or sometimes even wrong. I have spent hours and hours experimenting and while I think this is a really fun aspect of a mod, KSPI requires a bit too much right now. I can see you're making good progress with documenting the reactors now which is great. With the engines, launching and testing using Hyperedit mod was the only way I could ever figure out what each size of engine could do. I think you said that you changed the ATILA to not have variable ISP, I hope that's not going to mean <1000s rather than the 2800ish you can currently get at 33% thrust. I think beamed power is a great concept, but I decided to give up on it in the end. I found that getting receivers that could be oriented correctly was tricky and since by that point I had enough sci to unlock AIM reactors there really wasn't enough of an advantage at that point. Think was possibly just the way I was unlocking the tech tree though. Saucer shaped ISRU is difficult to incorporate into a design, but that's fun IMO. I would be sad to see it removed, especially since I have incorporated it. I can try to post some shots of my KSPI ships at some point.

Please allow this to be configurable, I much prefer paged lists and have memorised parts and which page of which category they're on. Also I find the scrolled UI areas in KSP 1.0 to be rather fiddly and a PITA, although that may not be an issue with newer version of Unity, but none I use very often - the editor I spend hours using however.

Last night I added a couple of small booster engines to my spaceplane design that failed to get into orbit of Eve from surface (using Hyperedit to test). The initial problem is once my KSPI jets are out of Atm I didn't have enough thrust to get orbital speed before being pulled back into the atmosphere. So added some more LqdHydrogen and 155kN of thrust to the wings using TweakScaled down to .625 ATILA, X48 tank, nosecap. I have no idea if this is enough because I couldn't even get it going fast enough to have overheating using the jets. Without the boosters I had to be really careful not to explode due to overheating, running with around a dozen heat gauges, several in the red, balancing speed vs heat. I could get it so fast that the height reached was over 100km with just under 1.5k dV needing to be added before dropping back to 90km to get into orbit. The 80kN was too slow, so hoping 235kN will do it quickly enough if I could actually get higher than 60km with the extra engines. The weight doesn't explain it, it's actually slightly lighter since I took 1.6t off before adding the boosters. The only explanation that I can think of is the drag. It certainly seems to have changed more that I would expect by adding 2 .625 tubes with aerodynamic cones on front. If the drag calculation is seeing two massive 2.5m tubes that might account for this kind of drastic effect. So if TS scales the drag cubes now, could it be broken with the KSPI parts? Is there a way I can investigate what the issue is?

No worries FreeThinker. I've noticed some edits of the OP changing and adding to the info there - this is for the next release right?

I know how to change modes on the fusion reactors, but I didn't realise that the AIM had other modes. I will take another look. When the Lithium runs out I can't breed tritium any more and the vistas need the Tritium. It can still move using the magnetic nozzle, but it's kinda limping along by that point. :-)

Hmm, doubt it's KSPI because I use them with it just fine.

That's insane! Loved reading about it and looking at the pics though. Thanks JR.

Well tonight when I loaded my save to play, the Trit & Deut levels were even again. Now it was late and I was tired, but I'm fairly sure I didn't imagine it. Some kind of wierdness. Anyway, guess there's no mystery to solve after all. Yes, when I deactivate the particle generator I do get some breeding - unfortunately far too little to be useful while the reactor is ticking over just keeping the cryostats powered. I need the particle gen to run the double vista's, so no breeding while using them. I will have to run the magnetic nozzle quite a bit to get some Tritium bred I think then. This engine was only ever intended to help get near other craft without killing everyone with the vista's and only gives 192kN thrust at 100% which is rather low for a big ship. Still, it can be done which is good. Very happy with this craft, it has 45 km/s dV at 100% thrust with the vista's and more if less throttle is used. Means it can pretty much go anywhere and use inefficient transfer windows if needed. Since it can refuel at gas giants or moons with surface water & has an AM collector, it should be able to keep going until the Lithium/Tritium runs out - so at some point it will have to return to Kerbin Station. The main weakness is it doesn't do atmospheres at all. None of the engines work in atmo! :-)

I'm the same, I find the science progression and working towards new toys to play with is the most fun for giving me objectives. When I finished the stock tree I had only visited Kerbin & Duna + moons so I could have proceeded to visit other planets but it's much nicer to have a reason to go. I decided to install CTT + NFT + KSPI mods. Lots of new toys, although with KSPI I had to spend a long time figuring out what a lot of the stuff does. Been a lot of fun though. Unfortunately visiting Jool + moons has nearly maxed the CTT additions now, so may be back to square 1 soon.

I'm talking total amount, not just in one cryostat. Just to be sure I wasn't being dumb I moved Trit&Deut so all cryo's are full except one so it was easy to see difference and I have definitely used about 10 more Tritium than Deuterium. So that's not it, any other ideas? I was actually starting to think AIM was breeding the wrong thing... it's a puzzle for sure. I do have a thermal generator. I have one of each, but the Thermal isn't doing much most of the time. I need it to power the ship systems when I deactivate the particle generator and use the magnetic nozzle. I'll try deactivating the particle generator see if that does anything to breed rates. Thanks for your reply.

So, I finalised my super ship 'Endeavour' and launched it towards Jool (5k m/s manouver FTW) to rescue the Kerbals who ran out of Tritium and Deuterium in the Dusty powered ship. This one has a scoop (see earlier post edit), AM collector and a ISRU so I should be able to refill everything except the Tritium, but that's bred in the AIM reactor so I have a tank of Lithium which I can't refill without help because this ship has no atmo capability. Main engines are 2 Vista's and Aux engine is a magnetic nozzle for when near other craft. All in all very happy with it.. probably spent over 16 hours making it and testing various things. I just noticed something worrying however, more Tritium has been used than Deuterium after the escape burn! How can this be when the Vista uses same amount of each, nothing else uses Tritium, and Deuterium is used in the AIM reactor. I should have used more Deuterium, especially because the reactor should breed the Lithium into Tritium. I hope this is easily explained because I don't want to have to scrap this ship now I have launched it properly. (for a start it cost nearly 4mill) The reactor window flits between 0.00 and NaN for the Tritium breeding rate. What's going on? Is AIM breeding broken? Do I need to put more Tritium on board?

I was at Jool, not Kerbin. I was hoping to refuel using Jool since it's atmosphere is largely Hydrogen. Can't get lower than 200k otherwise the ship explodes (stupid new heating to blame again) but should work at 200k orbit. So far it's only worked 1/4 times and at such a slow rate unaffected by time acceleration that unless I am doing it wrong makes these scoops useless. I figured I must be doing something wrong. :-) EDIT: Yep, I have lots of LqdHydrogen tanks. I think I know why it worked once and not the other times... I freed up space in the only tank the scoop has direct access to! :-) (by switching off cryo for a few seconds and letting a bit boil offO Still no idea how to actually use the 0.04 rate without time acceleration - will test switching away and if that doesnt work then I will dump the scoop I guess. EDIT2: Okay got this sorted out now. Physical time acceleration (i.e. in atmosphere) doesn't speed up collection but normal vacuum time accel does. (I was a few meters under 200k) Looks like refueling at Jool should work nicely.