Kerbonaut257

:/ me too. Seems we have the exact same issue. Argh. It's not your fault Nertea. Was hoping maybe you knew of what mod also plays with boiloff though! Beacause now it's worse than ever and not even close to balanced (which yours is). Now it's like "oh you wanted more than 50% of your liquid hydrogen to last past the 2 minute liftoff sequence?"

I also like to unlock nodes for "free" based on missions done. So I'll cheat the science to get a new node or two after an easy mission. Or maybe after a manned mission to another planet I'll take 5 or 6 nodes (using CTT, there's a lot more nodes!)

I am liking this idea. Don't know if you've played stellaris, but they have 3 separate resarch trees, one is like high-tech stuff, one is engineering, and one is biological research. And I feel like KSP could have a couple areas like "atmospheric research" which would lead to upgrades in wings, air breathing engines, fuselages, fairings, etc. "space research" which leads to upgrades in fuels, engines, solar panels, electricity generation, etc. and then maybe "Celestial body research" which leads to advances in landing gear, habitation modules, long range space exploration (nuclear engines), etc. And the way you would do research would be following applicable contracts in those types of situations. So maybe flying a plane and landing it to the island airport would advance that section, and sending a probe outside the atmosphere would advance the space research. And many parts would require a certain level of multiple nodes, for example the RAPIER engine would require an advanced level of tech in atmospheric, and also an advanced amount of tech in space research as well. I dunno. I would much rather have parts unlocked contractually than through spending science points. Though I think ACTUAL science points could be used to upgrade parts. Like making parachutes and control wings for rockets cheaper, or lighter, or things like that. This is why I love Kerbal R&D mod, because it gives science points a value beyond just unlocking parts. And unlocking parts could be done through test contracts with sub-normal test parts. Like maybe to unlock the swivel, you first have to use a crappy version of the swivel to get to space, and then that unlocks the regular part from then on.

Yeah I'm at work but I'll try this when I get home. It obviously has to be another mod because I've looked in every single part of the cryo tanks and cry engines folders and there's nothing related to boiloff left, I deleted it all. EDIT: Also worth noting is that if I have 3 tanks with the same fuel type stacked, the boiloff happens at DIFFERENT RATES. The boiloff being the most severe in the middle tank. And after deleting the boiloff stuff from the actual cryo tanks mod, the boiloff rate is EVEN FASTER. It's like insanely fast. Probably 1 percent per second or so from the middle tank in the stack.

Umm. I can't get rid of boiloff. I deleted the .dll AND i removed those module parts where the boiloff rate is set and the EC cost is set. I can't seem to get rid of it :/

Does the seti contract pack still work? it's one of my favorite contract packs :/ why is it abandoned?

So basically since its ISP is 800 or whatever, it has more than double the "range" of other engines, given the same fuel/mass ratio. Meaning if your ship weighs 40 tons and 20 tons of that is fuel, the LV-N will have more than double the dV. However, due to its weight, that makes it harder to get a good fuel/mass ratio. It also doesn't have super high thrust, meaning your transfer burns will be longer. But all that being said, they're totally worth it if you want to build a ship that can go many thousands of dV in a single stage.

I actually don't. And don't you dare say they're cheating! Because mods like scansat, remote tech, etc. Make things HARDER and bring new challenges.

I'm not a fan of life support because it just means increased mass for all manned missions and nothing too much more interesting than that (IMHO). I do love remote tech though, but I would play without it at first. You have to be really good at establishing various satellite orbits, understanding distances, etc.

If you get the mod scansat, you can find the biome map without cheating by "scanning" the planet. I like that much better I get a lot of information from mods, but I don't consider it cheating. It's just information that could all be calculated in an excel spreadsheet. I DO cheat for money/science sometimes if the reward seems stupid. Like if I do a manned mission to minmus, I'll give myself 500,000 spesos for that if I didn't have a contract for it.

The problem with making a new thread is that I can't do the modding. I just wanted to make some discussion and see if someone was interested, and if the author is also interested in stepping down.

Read the latest post just after yours by drhay53. I think he hits the nail on the head. I agree. It's not about complaining to the mod author to update it. We did that over a month ago and that's not what I'm doing now. I'm saying that it's been a month since we've heard from the author, 11 days since he's even done a commit, and I'm wondering if it's time, as dryhay53 said, to put the mod up for adoption. I am discussing something beyond "UPDATE PLZ" and I think it's a valid and valuable discussion for a mod such as this one.

I'm starting to wonder if it's time for someone else to pick this up? I know many of us KSP players feel like this mod is a neccesity, and I'm not sure how much longer I can survive without it! Lol. If you check https://bitbucket.org/xEvilReeperx/ksp_sciencealert you can see that he HAS been working on it some in the last month. But it's been 11 days since the last commit, and I'm not really sure if he's made a lot of progress or just a little in adapting it to 1.1.2. I guess I'm asking the author what he thinks. xEvilReeperx, do you WANT to keep working on it yourself? Or would you rather have the community try to run with it? I don't know enough about modding to even know if others COULD finish it. Personally I'd love for you to finish it but I know you posted saying that you had a lot of life stuff getting in the way and such. So I don't want to heap pressure on you when you don't have time or energy to work on it anyway.

I'm not here to complain directly to squad staff. But this is a literally gameplay breaking bug. Many of us expect our orbits to, ya know, remain stable. Especially for things like remote-tech. I literally have to resort to cheating the orbital periods to equal because as soon as I focus the craft, it begins getting a shorter orbital period. Then, if I want to re-aim the dishes on said satellites, then I have to go back in and cheat the orbit back again. This is ridiculous. I can't imagine the fix is THAT difficult. And would have been done in mere days if the patch hadn't been released before vacation. I doubt that was squads idea. But seriously. Who posts a big patch RIGHT before vacation without time to QA & bugfix? I am here to complain directly to whoever made that decision.

So are we discussing the bug of orbital decay happening? It's freakin annoying I must say :/

Okay awesome! Thanks. So I could make the electrical usage cheaper by decreasing cooling cost on the tanks, or make the boiloff less on the non cryo tanks? Seems good. I still haven't really had a chance to use the mod yet so I'll try it your way and then rebalance it if I get annoyed

Thanks! I really like this mod. I might tweak the boiloff numbers slightly, I assume I can do that in simpleboiloff.dll? I'm at work so can't see it. But I am looking forward to using some cool alien-looking spherical ships with high delta-v

Basically the dV needed to get to about 10Mm from a 70km parking orbit is the MOST expensive circular orbit. After that, the larger and larger circular orbits (even calculated beyond the SOI of 84Mm) get cheaper and cheaper and approach root(2)*current velocity. Because the initial burn required to get to escape velocity (apo of infinity) is root(2)*current velocity, and the cost to circularize at infinity is zero. So interestingly enough, it's more expensive than root(2)* current velocity to increase your orbit to about 10km. I do think that we're onto something thinking about it in terms of the oberth effect. Imagine it this way, EVERY m/s added to velocity at pe is MORE effective than the last, because the energy in the system uses v^2 in the calculation. So if you're squaring a number, adding a number when the number is high is MORE effective. Just like 50^2 compared to 51^2 is a bigger difference than 3^2 versus 4^2. Due to this, increasing by another 100 dV in the initial burn adds WAY more energy, thus making the circularizing at the top cheaper. It still seems pretty counter intuitive, but the numbers don't lie! Otis, inclination changes are cheaper to do the bi-eliptic transfer if you're changing more than 45 degrees or so. (this is where you go eccentric to the TOP of the SOI, change your inclination almost for free at the top of the orbit, and then recircularize at periaps). So it's kinda a similar concept in a way. I believe below 40 degrees it's cheapest to just change your inclination at the current orbit by burning normal/anti-normal

Sadly nothing anyone has said really makes sense to me. I do understand the oberth effect, and I guess I can understand how a slightly bigger boost at the periaps is going to increase the overall energy in the system more, even though you circularize much higher, it's very cheap to circularize that high up, so the added energy from the oberth effect at the low altitude more than compensates for the cheaper circularizing, ergo the total energy in the system is... greater? Despite costing less dV? That still is hard for me to grasp.

So I was playing around with orbital mechanics that I learned from scott manley. I found something interesting. Starting at a 70km Kerbin circular orbit. It costs about 1231 dv to get to a 10Mm circular orbit. However, getting to a 80Mm circular orbit is actually cheaper! It's only 1120 dV. I don't understand this. How is it possibly cheaper to get to a higher orbit. Can someone explain this to me? I understand that circularizing is cheaper in a higher orbit. But how is it possible that as your orbit is bigger, it actually is cheaper to get into that circular orbit.

I would never use eliptical orbits because there's the off chance, ever so slight, that they happen to align incorrectly and you lose comms to your munar, minmus, or other planet satellite.

What is y'alls favorite way to establish comm relays for non-kerbin bodies? It's an order of magnitude harder and more expensive usually, but I like to make little probe satellites in polar orbits 180 degrees away from each other. And each one of those has an omni-antenna capable of reaching the surface, a directional antenna that can get anywhere in the SOI (set to active vessel) and then a long range antenna to reach home. In this way, these two satellites give 100% coverage of that entire system, with the exception of the far side of moons, which need their own mini-sats, but those only require a directional to the two main ones in the system and not back home. I like to have both of these in a fairing and I launch a manned mission which has two of these on top. So it's usually a massive ship, but that way I can go to a system, establish a satellite relay, go down to the surface, do experiments, and then get home. All in one mission!

I cannot even imagine why there is such large debate about this. Kerbals DO have scientists. They DO understand calculations, masses, and thrust. The stock games gives you precise amounts for thrust, weight, and even ISP. If the kerbals can calculate ISP, surely they can figure out how must burn time you're going to get from an engine. (and from using this, along with start mass/end mass and the thrust of the engine, you get dV) There's absolutely no reason not to have dV in the stock game. Any argument against it is obscure and grasps at straws. It's a useful feature for spacecraft. A new player doesn't need to know it, but they also won't be harmed by knowing it. It's not that confusing. It could be introduced in a tutorial just like manouever nodes.

So I couldn't find anything on the last couple pages. What do I do to remove the boiloff? I'm not entirely sure yet whether or not I want to keep that "feature" of these engines

How am I supposed to know how long engines last? Also, there's only a couple research experiments I can do, so how am I supposed to tech up with just the "atmosphere over grasslands" biome? I'm not trying to sound complain-y, but I'm just not getting the hang of this early RP0 playstyle. I feel like I have zero options. Testflight keeps engines from working long enough to get me to space, not having a guidance unit that lets me control the ship keeps me from being able to use a small rocket, and the bigger guidance unit only has a shelf life of 3 minutes and is impossible to lift into space with the tiny engines because of previously mentioned failure. And will I be adversely affected by removing testflight? Honestly the idea of parts failing for no particular reason doesn't sound fun to me. Is there anything else it does that I need?