Jump to content

a_schack

Members
  • Posts

    40
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by a_schack

  1. 2 hours ago, CoderPythonX said:

    I recently installed RO and the recommended mods via CKAN from a fresh 1.2.2 install. The game loads up until the progress bar has RealismOverhaul/RO_SuggestedMods/SSTU/SSTU_RO_SRB5/SSTU-RO-ENG-SRB5 at which it continues to be stuck there.

    output_log.txt

    That sounds like you've got a mod for 1.3. There have been some issues with CKAN installing 1.3 mods despite telling it you only want 1.2.2 mods, but I'm not sure how many of them are fixed.

    Since you mentioned SSTU, did you get the 1.2.2. version? Last 1.2.2 compatible release is 0.5.34.134. It could be another mod too though.

  2. 6 hours ago, DocRockwell said:

    Weird. I installed via CKAN and the version file and zip archive both say v.11.5.1, but it's different from the latest release on GITHUB. Thanks!

    *Edit* my mistake, it's the same as the latest official release. Are the files listed in the link you provided for the next release? Should I go "clone or download>download as zip" and install these files?

    I think the current master branch shouldn't break saves, but you'd best back up your save. Download as zip, and then extract the RealismOverhaul folder into your gamedata. You should remove the existing Realism Overhaul folder before that though.

    Alternatively you can cherry pick the SSTU files.

    I'm currently playing on the updated Master branch, and it's definately stable, but I started a new game for that, so I can't tell you from experience how it is with regards to breaking saves.

  3. @pap1723 is there any chance you can make those warnings in a different colour to make them stand out? Generally, I love the warnings on the new contracts, like the Molniya orbit. And I'd suggest adding warnings about antennas to especially the early interplanetary flyby missions too. Perhaps even to the first lunar flyby contracts too. I think that's one of the things, that'll throw new players off.

  4. 12 minutes ago, Steven Mading said:

    It makes more sense for gameplay because surface samples are a more powerful ability than flags.  It also makes more sense historically because the later Apollo missions did a much better job of collecting rocks, good rocks, useful rocks, than the earlier ones did, specifically because astronauts were getting better geology training (something that makes sense to model via the astronaut complex).

    I'm sorry, I think you're misunderstanding me. I agree that flag planting in itself makes no sense. I think that being forced to upgrade your AC before doing a manned landing on the moon is a good idea.

    I also think that either hard or soft requirements (on requiring buildings or tech or whatnot) on missions are good. But I think the contracts need to do a better job at explaining what you need.

  5. 47 minutes ago, Steven Mading said:

    To make it a similar situation manuever nodes would have to be a hard requirement to be allowed to perform any burns at all, and they're not.  All the burns you perform with a manuever node could have been done without the help of the node.  Manuever nodes don't cause your engine to become ignitable when it otherwise wouldn't have been.  Manuever nodes help you *plan* the burn to reach a given orbit.  They are not a requirement to make it possible *at all* to make the burn like the astronaut complex is for flag planting.  Tonnage limits on the launchpad are also not as much of a hard boolean limit because how much they hinder you varies depending on tech tree upgrades for engine ISP, your rocket design, etc. If RP-0 prevented you from getting an orbit contract based on *it's heuristic guess* of how hard it would be for you to do that would be a problem because for some players that guess would be wrong and it would be doing them a disservice to use that heuristic guess to prevent giving them the contracts they actually *can* achieve but the game doesn't realize it. 

    But this flag planting feature isn't such a heuristic guess.  It's a hardcoded boolean guarantee that it's impossible to plant a flag without that AC upgrade.

    I can assure you that you will need to upgrade your launchpad, and more than once, before you can send a moon to the moon, even as spam-in-a-can. :)

    My point is, I don't mind having a hard coded boolean that you need to upgrade the AC before sending a man to the moon. I completely agree that flag planting makes no sense in itself, and you can always discuss if gating is good game design or not, but in my view it serves its purpose of forcing you to spend money to upgrade and forcing you to plan ahead. What it doesn't do is provide a reason that will suspend disbelief, nor does it do a very good job of making you aware of the gating. And in my opinion, not having maneuver nodes is as big a hard coded boolean, because I simply wouldn't know the math to figure it out by hand, nor would I want to spend the time doing it. I'm already doing it for the new contracts that require a specific eccentricity, and that's reasonably simple.

    51 minutes ago, Steven Mading said:

    The only indication of that additional requirement is a one-line thing buried in the bullet points.  Adding a one-sentence description of that bullet point doesn't really change this much, I think.  What would work better would be to change the title of the contract.  In stock, all contracts that require a flag planting actually say they are flag planting contracts in the title itself.  Which makes sense because if you ask someone, "Can you plant a flag on the moon yet?" they will know that implies also landing a person.  But the reverse is not true.  If you ask someone "Can you land a person on the moon yet?" they're not going to automatically assume that means also planting a flag.  If the title says "plant flag on the moon" it implies both landing a person and flag planting at once in one compact statement.  It might make a better title.

    What I meant was that you'd need a big fat red text saying "HERE BE DRAGONS", not a casual note in the bottom. And because RP-0 is scary, I'd prefer it for all contracts that are really big milestones or are offered before you can reasonably expect players to have the tech. Experienced players will know and disregard, but new players won't smash head into wall. The step from a lunar orbit to a lunar landing is massive. And it doesn't take long before you're offered Mars and Venus contracts. If you don't know RP-1 well enough, you could easily be tempted to take them, because it's not that much dV and there's a window coming up. Only it's 4 years before you get the antenna to do it.

  6. 5 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

    I noticed that when it offers the "First human landing on moon" contract, one of the requirements is to plant a flag.  But that requires upgrading the Astronaut complex to level 2 first, and you get the contract offered without checking for the astronaut complex level.  In other words, if you take the contract without noticing that, and it costs more money to upgrade the astronaut complex than you have.... then you get penalized for the lunar landing contract failure because you literally cannot do the contract yet and don't have the money to upgrade the building yet.

    Could that be changed to not offer that contract until you have flag planting ability?  (or remove astronaut complex upgrades from the requirements for flag planting, because, let's face it, flag planting should be pretty low tech and happen automatically once you can EVA on the surface of the moon.)

     

    The first solution raises another issue: "Why don't I get the crewed moon landing offered?", and having to know you won't get it offered until you've upgraded your Astronaut Complex. It's not really too dissimilar to figuring out "Oh wow, this moon lander requires me to send x tons to orbit, and that requires a bigger launcher and while I can probably get the tech if I focus on it, the LV will weigh so much I need to upgrade my pads and I can't make that in time".

    It's also akin to taking contracts with specific orbits, which are the majority of contracts in the next release, and forgetting to upgrade your tracking station and mission control to get manuever nodes.

    As for the other solution, to remove the requirement, that has some other consequences. What's the reason to upgrade your AC then? Well, given what's being worked on now with training for specific manned command parts and, I guess it makes sense to be able to plant flags right off the bat, but have e.g. capsules be gated behind AC level - think level 1 for cockpits, level 2 for Mercury/Gemini, level 3 for Apollo and so on. But really, that still means you need to upgrade your AC.

    Overall, since there's also a lot of implicit requirements of building upgrades for other contracts, I'd suggest perhaps have those "first of a kind" contracts contain a disclaimer about making sure you have the AC level, the pad level and the mission control/tracking station level.

  7. 5 hours ago, AbhChallenger said:

    I have been considering trying a Realism Overhaul KSP install (Just my opinion. That REALLY ought to be made into a single install package so that the challenge is the realism of the mod instead of needing youtube videos just to get it running) Yet this seems like a massive difficulty spike for those used to stock career mechanics.

    Will the default difficulty settings be forgiving for those not yet used to these mechanics?

    Right now the big issue with installing is that CKAN is giving you 1.3 mods that'll break the game (won't even start). As for installing manually, I don't find it difficult, but I can understand why it might not be the easiest.

    About the difficulty spike from stock, that's always been there, and it's one of the defining things about Realism Overhaul. I can't see any forgiving mechanics being introduced as that'd basically be reverting back to stock mechanics. RP-0 doesn't really make the game more difficult, it just changes career a lot and makes it more streamlined. Especially with the new contracts, which are heavensent.

    But yes. It's a big ramp up in difficulty to go from stock to RO. And one well worth it. The sense of accomplishment when succeeding is far greater than anything experienced in stock.

  8. 1 hour ago, EliasDanger said:

    Curious, are SpaceX's engines included or planned on being included in RP-0? Figure once you can build rockets like SpaceX's indevelopment ITS rocket with that Raptor engine, the possibilities for manned solar system exploration in RSS would be amazing. Also curious if the experimental fuel free EmDrive will make an appearance...

    Apologies if this has been discussed before.

    The Merlin's already included. About the Raptor, there's a preliminary general MM patch for it in RO, but no part packs that provide it. So for it to make an appearance in RP-0 it needs some parts pack to make it and then for someone to make an MM patch for it in RO and finally someone needs to guess the cost and place it in the tech tree in RP-0. Of course, some of these feats are quite difficult as it hasn't actually been made yet.

  9. 1 hour ago, michal.don said:

    Thank you very much, a-schack. Do I understand it correctly that I create a FASA folder in the GameData, and insert just the pod files?

    Michal.don

    I'm honestly not certain. Looking at the file structure, it seems it's modular, so you should be able to get away with just FASA\Gemini2\FASA_Gemini_Pod2.

  10. 1 hour ago, michal.don said:

    Strange, my Tantares folder doesn't have anything named like this. And there is no Gemini pod in the 2nd generation tree node either. It could be an issue in my install, I might try to reinstall the mod. 

    Thanks,

    Michal.don

    Perhaps you only have TantaresLV and lack the pack with the pods etc?

    Edit: Finally got to my PC. You're absolutely right, it's not part of Tantares. But for some reason, there's an MM patch for it in RO. It might've been in the past.

    From what I can see in https://github.com/KSP-RO/FASA-RO/releases, there's some hope if all you want is the capsule.

  11. 1 hour ago, michal.don said:

    Tantares has a 2-seat Soyuz capsule, but unfortunately, it's in the same tech tree node as the 3-seat Apollo capsule. And the last version of FASA is for 1.0.5, and will probably upgrade straight to 1.2, or so I heard. So no luck for me, until 1.2 :)

    I don't have the game in front of me, but checking the cfgs and tech tree on github, I'm very certain that Tantares has a Gemini capsule (there is at least an MM patch for it in RO), and it's placed in 2nd generation capsules, as opposed to 3rd generation capsules for the Apollo. Mercury would be first generation.

    Edit: The partname for the Tantares Gemini capsule is Spica_Crew_A.

  12. On 14/10/2016 at 9:48 AM, michal.don said:

    Hi,

    I would appreciate your help (once again :) ). Do you know about a mod that adds a two-crew capsule, that works with RP-0? Ideally something Gemini-like, I reached the point where I fly crewed LEO missions, and I would like to send two astronauts instead of one (and the three-kerb-pod is still quite far down the tech tree).

    I run the 1.1.3 RO install.

    Thanks,

    Michal.don

    Tantares should have 2 seater Gemini and Soyuz capsules. Other than that, FASA has a Gemini capsule, but I'm not sure how much of FASA is currently working. Both are supported in RP-0.

  13. 7 minutes ago, mr_trousers said:

    New just general question for anyone: so I understand that getting into an orbit with inclination less than the latitude of your launch site isn't very easy (though I don't know how to correct for it). But anyway, reading this, I looked up the angle of the moon's orbit and saw that, it being near the ecliptic, it was actually pretty close to the latitude of Cape Canaveral. So I assumed I'd be pretty good for orbits for getting to the moon/the ecliptic in general from those launch sites.

    But actually, when I achieved orbit, it appeared that I'd been terribly wrong; the moon was in a plane probably some 50 degrees off from mine. Perhaps my assumption would have been correct, had I launched at a different time of year or from a different longitude, like from China maybe.

    You need to launch when Cape Canaveral is directly below the plane of the moon's orbit. So wait until they align, then launch. At 1h20m in this video, I do just that, so maybe that can help. 

     

  14. Episode 7: Designing a lunar orbiter and launching our lunar impactor

    A rather calm day at the office. Before launching Mani, our lunar impactor, we set about designing Mani 3, our lunar orbiter. It's mission is to orbit the moon with a periapsis below 150km (the limit for in space low). This requires an uprated TLI stage to carry the extra weight as well as smaller lunar orbit insertion stage. As we're still restricted in terms of avionics, we're using the Able avionics unit, which sadly uses quite a lot of electricity, forcing us to also carry a more of that. The total payload (TLI, insertion stage and probe) comes in at 4.7t, which is perfect for our Borr A3 Alpha 1 launch vehicle. We do two quick sims to make sure it'll get into a proper orbit and set it to build. It's much larger than the Mani 1, so it takes about twice as long to build. But we buy into a lot of tech node research, giving us a couple of further upgrade points, cutting build time a bit.

    But finally it's time to launch Mani 1. Fortunately, we're right on the moon's orbit when it rolls out, so it's just a question of pressing launch! It's a tense experience as we unleash the LR79s and the LR105 for the first time, but thankfully the ascent goes off without a hitch, though we cut off the upper stage a bit early and end up in a 144x209km. We use RCS to just boost ourselves to a 167x324km orbit and start planning our TLI.

    We get a pretty good and rather swift TLI, but it's very sensitive with regards to delta-v, and we have a lot of thrust on the AJ10-104D towards the end, but that's why we carry RCS. It's still cut far too short though, but we make a manuever node to burn the rest of the fuel, ending in an impact.

    And this is where it all ends in tears as the AJ10 shuts down before managing to spool up, and we eventually end up far too short to even intercept the moon. Even all our RCS won't save us, and the Mani 1 is relegated to space junk.

    We wrap up this episode by building the Mani 3, an exact replica of Mani 1, and prioritise it over Mani 2.

  15. 3 hours ago, Emankcin said:

    At one point last night I was designing upper stages and I crashed when I attempted launch. No biggie, it happens, start it again. Except the game crashes either as soon as ksp finishes loading or around a quarter through, every time after that. I tried Active Texture Management, and that didn't fix it. However when I deleted RSS, it did start. I'd rather not have to do that. Thanks for any help!

    Error log: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OJLkY6PBf8Y5Op52Yaa7zIaQG65t4YdrWEef-L3Mcm8/edit

     

     

    Your log file isn't publicly available.

  16. Episode 6: Designing a modular launch vehicle to take us to the moon

    This is a very long episode. The reason being that we design a modular launch vehicle which will be able to handle payloads ranging from 1.5t to 5t and probably more. The benefit is obviously, as it's modular, that we won't spend that much time designing rockets going forward - at least not until we unlock the next engines.

    But before we start the design and testing process, we launch SR 25, our last sounding rocket for now. Mission: To grab radiation data from low and high atmosphere as well as low space over the poles.

    Our base 5t LV consists of the Borr A3 lower stage and the Alpha A1 upper stage. The Borr A3 is based on a core stage with 2x LR79 engines and 3 radial boosters with 1 LR79 each. Plans are that it can be adapted from 0 to 4 boosters depending on upper stage. Our initial upper stage, the Alpha A1, is using the LR105. While technically not an upper stage engine, it looks to be the best there is for it currently, beating out the LR91 due to having nearly twice the burn time. Thanks to my flawed memory we also purchased the LR91 because I thought the LR105 had less thrust, but oh well. We expect to design further upper stages based on the Agena for lesser payloads.

    Having quickly tested the Borr A3 Alpha 1 in simulations and finding it just worked perfectly as is, we set about designing the Mani 1, the rocket that will have us impact the moon.
    Thanks to new technology, the probe and the TLI combined weigh just 1.75t, considerably less than the 3t we'd expected. We stick it on top of a slightly adjusted LV, the Borr A1 Alpha 1A. The Borr A1 is a Borr A3 without the radial boosters and the Alpha 1A is a slightly shortened Alpha 1.

    And this should just be it, shouldn't it? Well, no. Due to the design we have over half the delta-v on the upper stage while also having quite high thrust to weight ratio on it. This causes issues with the ascent profile, and we spend a fair amount of simulations on screen trying various ascent profiles, and then go and do even more offscreen before finally deciding on the rather unorthodox profile of coasting for 45s before igniting the second stage. It turns out to work really well though, and will get us into a pretty circular low orbit.

    In total we spent nearly 4 hours on something that can be wrapped up in a few lines, but there you have it. In the next episode we'll launch Mani and try to impact the moon.

  17. 2 hours ago, StuntFlyer said:

    I don't know if this is where this question should go but, I was wondering if for each of the launch locations do I need to upgrade all the buildings in each of the locations. I understand updating the launch pads , runways and hangers but the tracking station is used to for all vehicles, the R&D is I would assume is for everywhere,  as is mission control for contracts. and administration building.

    Thanks

    Since you're playing career, I assume you're also using Realism Overhaul and RP-0. If so, it depends on whether you use Kerbal Construction Time too. If you do, and you use the RP-0 preset, upgrades to general buildings (tracking station, mission control etc.) will persist across launch sites while you'll have to upgrade runway and launch pad on each site you want to use.

    If you use some other combination of mods, I can't give you a definitive answer, but I doubt facilities will upgrade sine it's KCT that takes care of that.

  18. 3 hours ago, Luis Von Green said:

    Have two short questions:

    1. Do you still need the rss config for playing with RO/RSS/RP-0 ?

    2. Can someone give me tips for making a network in rss which reaches behind the moon?

    Thanks! 

    As for 1), no, RO comes with the config built-in. No need for separate configs.

  19. 56 minutes ago, mr_trousers said:

    Hi guys. So I'm playing with RemoteTech on RSS, which has much greater distances involved than stock, such that even the largest dishes are insufficient for contact with most of the outer solar system. Additionally, I was vaguely considering the plausibility of adding in the recently "discovered" Planet X, which hovers somewhere around 600 AU out, 20 times further than Neptune, which is already completely out of range.

    My question is - does Tweakscale work with RT dish antennae, allowing you to increase the size of a dish and with it, its range? I assume not - if not, can this be added? If not, can someone tell me how I might do it?

    My ultimate goal here, aside from long-range satellites, would be to actually build several ground stations on Earth equipped with several very long-range tweakscaled dish antennae. If, hypothetically, dish range scales proportionally with dish surface area (I do not know if this is true and I doubt it is so neat, but I don't know the science behind antennae, so...), then a CommTech-1 which has a range of 350M km and a diameter of 3.5m, and which in stock can reach as far as Eeloo, would only need to be scaled up to 17.5m in diameter to have a range of about 50 AU, which is just outside of Pluto's orbit, which is approximately the same as what being able to reach Eeloo would correspond to. This actually seems rather optimistic scaling, as the actual Deep Space Network site are all equipped with a 70 meter diameter antenna, though I can't even begin to guess what kind of effective range that would give. Going by the proportional surface area to range thing above, a 70 meter dish would have a range of about 935 AU. Which would, conveniently, be sufficient to connect with the hypothetical Planet Nine most of the time.

    Anyway, the point is, if this isn't already incorporated and it won't be added (both of which I assume are the case), can someone help me out with making it happen for myself? Probably the only dish I would need to incorporate TweakScale behavior for would be the CommTech-1 - just a single dish. That should be doable, right?

    Are you using Realism Overhaul? If so, it changes RemoteTech settings to use a different calculation as well as add a bunch of base stations on earth, most notably the Deep Space Network. The DSN has a range of 1.14e14 meters, or 762au according to Google, but again, that doesn't tell you everything since it uses a very different calculation.

    More info here: https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0/wiki/FAQ. It's in the RP-0 wiki, but from what I can see, the actual .cfg is part of RO, not RP-0. In the latest RO releases the antennae descriptions have been updated to reflect the actual range.

  20. Episode 5: Another orbit, more sounding rockets

    This episode is all about harvesting that science. We send up SR 20 to get the last bio sample data, this one from the lower atmosphere, and as we get Early Avionics, we start measuring radiation and micrometeorites everywhere.

    Phantom 2 is built on the Phantom 1b launch vehicle to get radiation data from nearly all the biomes in space around earth, while we build SR 21-23 to get it from the low and high atmosphere as well as space over the poles.

    SR 24's mission description is to take micrometeorite recordings in high and low atmosphere as well as low space as that experiment is situation specific rather than biome specific.

    We started building all the sounding rockets as well as Phantom 2 before we actually unlocked the science experiments and then edited our half finished vehicles to include the experiments after unlocking them. It's a neat little trick if you're not really building anything else.

    First launch is Phantom 2, and initially the launch goes off without a hitch, but about 10 seconds before second stage cutoff, the AJ10-37 unexpectedly shuts down. Fortunately, we were carrying excess delta-v on the next two stages for this exact eventuality, and so the slight loss didn't ruin our launch. We end up in a 153x845km orbit and set about getting our science data.

    SR 21-24 technically also went well, but I messed up on SR 22 and opened my science window before staging, which meant it disappeared when I staged. This was a bit of a bummer as I hadn't bound it to an action group, and the rocket was sufficiently wobbly that I couldn't peek inside the nose cone and grab it from there until the very last moment, and so we only managed to get radiation data from the low atmosphere over the poles. Thus the SR 25 is being built to replace it.

    And that's really all there is to this episode. No new designs, no tests, just a bit of building and launching. I do wonder how on earth I could spend this long on it, but I suspect I might just be the careful type who likes to think things through three times at least...

  21. 4 hours ago, John FX said:

    Ah, you mean the maximum rated burn time, I think that`s about 240 seconds for the arobeee IIRC I generally put an extra 10 seconds of fuel over the MRBT

    If you right click the part in the VAB and scroll down there is an info section that tells you the MRBT, some variants have more than others.

    It used to be a bit above 2 mins iirc, but since the last couple or releases of RO (and moving the TestFlight configs to RO from TestFlight), it's 50 seconds for the WAC Corporal, 65s for the XASR-1 and 70s for the AJ10-27. On top of that, the max reliability of the WAC Corporal is somewhat lower than the other two. Since the AJ10-27 has a bit more burn time but a lot more thrust, you'll get a very, very significant increase in delta-v from using it (despite its slightly lower isp) with the same payload. The XASR-1 is a straight up replacement for the WAC Corporal and is just in every single way better.

    Edit: It used to be 125s for the WAC Corporal and 135s for the XASR-1 and the AJ10-27.

×
×
  • Create New...