Vila Restal

I'm quite new to Kerbalism. Haven't sent kerballed missions to other planets yet so far from the best person to advise. I have been keeping kerballed ships in mun and minmus orbit for 100's of days without much radiation and a lot less protection than that (have you done that too? do you find that?). I believe interplanetary space should have the same rad exposure as orbiting the mun. Incidentally, I like how it pays to test things in Kerbalism and I think putting a prototype in orbit round the mun to test for long term survivability is a good example of that. Anyway, I wonder how long the journey is. The most fuel efficient routes are also usually the slowest (especially if using slingshots). Perhaps it might be necessary to be more direct to reduce the flight time. Nuclear engines add to the radiation of course. I've resolved not to use them on long kerballed missions. Lastly, if they're dying from radiation on the way to Jool I wouldn't fancy their chances at surviving when they get there. Jool should have very high radiation levels in its vicinity and I see from System/Radiation.cfg, Jool radiation_inner = 200.0 and radiation_outer = 5.0. Compared to 10 and 2 for Kerbin. A kerballed mission to Jool must surely be the toughest thing to attempt in Kerbalism. For your own preferences, I expect you could turn down the Sun radiation level or increase radiation fatal_threshold in a cfg file.

That's great thank you @lordcirth I've added these lines to my (growing :)) Kerbalismtweaks.cfg file and it does the trick: @PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[*ModuleScience*]]:NEEDS[FeatureScience]:FOR[Kerbalism] { @MODULE[*ModuleScience*]:HAS[#experimentID[infraredTelescope]] { @xmitDataScalar = 1 } } @EXPERIMENT_DEFINITION[*]:HAS[#id[infraredTelescope]]:NEEDS[FeatureScience]:FOR[Kerbalism] { @dataScale = 43 } Edit: LR-relaying and transmittable-IR-telescope-data tweaks in action: First probe (outside Kerbin SOI) has RA-2 and IR telescope. Second probe (still inside Kerbin SOI) has RA-15 set to relay. First would be able to talk to Kerbin anyway at these ranges but beyond 184,600,000km (a bit further than max distance to Sarnus) it would not (without the relay) but if it remains within 184,600km of the 2nd (the relay) it will. Also might improve data transmission rates even when within its own range of Kerbin (I presume that's why it is already being relayed).

My reasons for 'fixing' the 'relay' antennae are as follows: I think antennae called 'relay' should be able to relay. They are more bulky, costly, massive and power hungry than 'non-relay' antennas for nothing more than a bit more range. Each relay antenna becomes completely redundant once the next level of 'non-relay' (deployable) antenna becomes available. e.g. HG-20 is better in every respect (bulk, cost, mass, range, power consumption) than an RA-2, Communatron 88-88 is better in every respect than a RA-15. Giving them a relay capability gives them a purpose worthy of their greater costs IMO. Relaying is currently limited to the ranges of the low-gain antennae (i.e. 2,000km max) and I don't think that's realistic especially when you think of stations communicating with each other or their probes. I think a station/mothership around Jool should (given the right equipment) be able to launch a small probe to one of its moons and relay the signal directly from it to Kerbin without having to go to that moon too. By giving the 'relay' antennae (RA-2, RA-15 and RA-100) low-gain capability (as well as high-gain) fixes all these things. I've added a cfg file to gamedata (now that I've learnt you can do that) with these lines did that for me. This is what I added: // ============================================================================ // Add low-gain modules to relay antennae // ============================================================================ @PART[RelayAntenna5]:NEEDS[FeatureSignal]:FOR[Kerbalism] { MODULE { name = Antenna type = low_gain cost = 0.33 dist = 2e8 rate = 0.032 } } @PART[RelayAntenna50]:NEEDS[FeatureSignal]:FOR[Kerbalism] { MODULE { name = Antenna type = low_gain cost = 0.5 dist = 2e9 rate = 0.064 } } @PART[RelayAntenna100]:NEEDS[FeatureSignal]:FOR[Kerbalism] { MODULE { name = Antenna type = low_gain cost = 0.66 dist = 2e10 rate = 0.128 } } and it works on first testing. Low-gain relay range is still limited by the weakest link so a Communatron 16-S can only relay via any RA at 2,000km range but an RA-2 could relay via any RA at 200,000km range and an RA-15 could relay via an RA-15 or RA-100 at 2,000,000km range. I haven't put much thought into those ranges (1/10th the high gain range at the moment). I'm not trying to persuade anyone else they should but if anyone agrees with my thoughts on this and wants to make this tweak too...

Problem for me is they were launched weeks ago and I don't have a save from before and the whole process took days. I do think a 'relay' antenna should be able to relay anyway so I will try to figure out how to make them do that and update here if I manage it.

Reading this I realise I've done the same thing (in a career with Galileo OPM and probes heading off to all the outer planets that aren't going to be able to relay as I planned). I too had presumed a 'relay' antenna could relay. I'm thinking about creating a cfg file to make it work how I think it should work. I imagine adding low-gain modules to the 'relay' antennae would do the trick. Might also make IR telescope science transmittable while I'm at it

That's great @Gotmachine . It does exactly what you said it would. Thank you for that. Edit: and no obvious Kerbalism errors in the debug console.

I've got the same problem as Magzimum. Existing game (save) doesn't have Kerbalism parts menu in VAB Neither does new game but otherwise Kerbalism is working. Saved ships and sub-assemblies do have Kerbalism parts. Food, Water and Oxygen do deplete on manned vessels. (I expect crew die if they run out of those too.) You can see I have a few other mods installed. The part-related ones are Ven's Stock Part Revamp, Procedural Parts and TweakScale. I've removed all 3 for a new sandbox game and it doesn't help. Edit: It was working fine before KSP 1.3.1 update.