Seyvern

1 ppm= .0001% 10 ppm = .001% (1 per hundered thousand) 100 ppm = .01% (1 per ten thousand) So you can see, he just switches notation when the ppm gets large enough.

Everything appears to be working for me besides the map - still don't graphically see any hotspots, but the rest is A-OK. Enjoy the beer!

I second that Yay for open license

Ah - I'm running .24.2?

EC / MW - ok got it. Tried the new build, no difference - still doesn't display hotspots graphically, still does not extract ore when deployed and run. Tried launching a new ship on the pad of KSP - no difference.

sorry, no i meant that its using the unit 'MW' (megawatts) which isn't standard KSP power (electric charge) Trying your new build now.

Oh and since I'm trying this out,one request: either map the integrated landing legs part to 'g' (deploy gear) or enable its use in the tweakables so we can set its action group to something. Thx! Seyv

I think I'm having the same problem - im on a .30% kerbinite deposit, no map display of the hotspot, and the drill doesn't spin and I don't refine. Here might be a clue (related to ORS) - its asking for 2500 MW of power to run the drill. Since I'm not using interstellar, I dont have any MW! -Seyv

The best answer is Dangerous_Beans, not Jimbims. Basically - the idea is - as you point out - you want to burn low where the oberth effect is maximum. Because the orbital period in LKO is very fast (~30 minutes) relative to the inerestion point for a planetary transfer (months to years), you can spread the burn over quite a few Kerbin orbits and not impact your burn trajectory in any noticeable way. So, step 1, make a maneuver plan. Step 2, Burn for some short amount of time around hte burn point, this will make your orbit eliptical. Step 3: Replan your manuver point for the next orbit. Orbit around back to periapsis and burn again. Orbit becomes more eliptical. Step N: keep repeating step 3 until you have finished your burn sequence. Two big things to watch out for. Make sure none of your burns intercept Mun or Minmus. Make sure your next to last burn stays within kerbin's SOE -Seyv

OK, i think the problem then is the link on Ram0n's thread for treeedit is bad - any chance you can link a good download?

Argh. Treeedit.dll - I try it - it does nothing. I don't know why? I put it in a folder in Gamedata named treeedit. I've tried using it with and without treeloader. Basically, I get a normal science screen and no opportunity to load a differnt tree. Is treeedit a 40k dll to everyone else (signficantly smaller than treeloader?)

I prefer the one thats in this pack. Why do you like the strechy one better?

Been playing with this today. Holy crap. Best Mod Ever. I want to retrofit all the other tanks with your code. I love how it reduces the part count and makes things customizable, but its not OP. I put them all in the tech tree way high up, your plan sounds good. -Seyv

Agreed right now. I'm assuming thats something squad will fix reasonably soon. Or someone will figure out how to mod it.

Why allow them to be upgradeable? After all, the mechanical design of a gas core and a solid core reactor are not at all compatable. Make two sets of parts - gas cores and solid cores. You cant build gas cores until you have the tech, and solid cores that are floating around up there are obsolete. Doesn't mean you can't continue to use them, or even build them, just means they aren't state of the art. And if you build your ship correctly, you can detatch the obsolete reactor and plug in a new one if you get around to it or have some pressing need. Getting rid of the whole 'upgrading by button push' paradigm would make the whole thing more solid IMO.

I think you and blizzy (achievements mod) should get together and create a joint economy mod. MIssions randomly pop up w/ payouts. (e.g. put a satellite w/ these 3 parts into an orbit within these bounds). Do that successfully you get $$. Get $$, lets you fire off more rockets. Combine that w/ the existing science system, and you have something to bridge the gap till squad implements same. Just my 0.02. Between the two of you, I think you have all the code you need to implement it.

Since people are making requests I would love some sort of cockpit part for interplanetary ships along the lines of the FLY or B9's pod - one that has good views - really good views - but looks kinda stockish.

Meh, dont really use that feature, yet anyway - just wanted to correct his mistake. Because, it kinda opens up possibilities. He could, for example, set every dish to transmit or receive (this is not universally true, but is generally true for many systems), and assign each dish a gain. Then depending upon which transmitter dish you linked to which receive dish, the game could trivially compute a link budget based upon gain * gain * 1/Range ^2 and estimate a link budget loss. YOu can use this to , for example... calculate how fast you transmit data (e.g. science) or how much transmitter power loss you have from your power satellites or if you were rebuilding duck's remotetech functionality, you could compute what range you have a workable link budget, and when you are 'out of range' probably more than that as well, if you wanted to think about it for a while.

Agreed. Pretty sure I was replying to him in the first place, and I am pretty sure he would have no problem with the equations I linked judging from my previous conversations with him. Objections are with rabid responses from fans who view any and all non rah rah posts as attacks. I generally dont post much because of the fans.

You just like picking arguements without merit don't you? He is already modeling a set of two antennas setting up a link budget 'across the solar system'. The argument in question was the GAIN of those respective antennas. And, by the way, a bigger antenna makes your aiming requirement more difficult, not easier. PS - we do that all the time in real life, and i'm including myself in that we as a person who actually does that.

Actually, this is wrong. The beamwidth (or dispersion) of a wave is related to the antenna size as lambda/L. So, a big dish on recieve and a small dish on transmit has the same overall link budget as a small dish on a recieve and a big dish on transmit, all other things being equal. Thus, as one would find in this link : http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/ew-radar-handbook/one-way-radar-equation.htm and scrolling down to Equation 5, you will see that hte one way link budget (which is what you have in your transmitted power simulation) contains Gt (gain of the tnansmitter) and Gr (gain of the receiver) in the equation, and both to the first power. -Seyv

ok figured out the spreadsheet thing. google docs to the rescue. Here is a possible solution, can't tell if you will like it or not, but it conserves energy. So, lets start with the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AstvgPENUcE2dE1Ca2xnWGNvQkVKOGtfRU1RUUY3Tmc&single=true&gid=0&output=pdf https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AstvgPENUcE2dE1Ca2xnWGNvQkVKOGtfRU1RUUY3Tmc&usp=sharing So if you check out that spreadsheet, you notice what I'm doing is altering the 'engineering efficiency' of big reactors vs. small ones. End result, all the NTR's have thrust to weight ratios that range from ~19 to 29 (bigger ones are more efficient TWR). They range in power output from 16MW to 3500 MW (for solid core reactors) and are therefore within the range that you were using within a factor of 2. And they conserve energy between reaction thrust and energy generation. Notes are embedded in the spreadsheet. You could change the exponent coefficients to tweak the values, obviously. I didn't mess with AM but you could do the same thing there to the same purpose. And, as much as I've read up on NTRs, i have no idea what the actual engineering effiincies are in scaling up or down reactors, so for all I know, these might be relatively accurate (aside from the fact that the Thrust to weight ratios are all hosed compared to real life, but thats stock!) Hope this helps. -Seyv PS playing with the relative mass ratios between reactors and heat exchangers, and you can get some cool effects there if you make the exponents slightly different. Might bed worth exploring. IRL< im not sure what the relative 'mass' ratio is between the machinery associated with the reactor and that of the heat exchanger. I suspects its pretty close to 1:1, perhaps even with the heat exchanger equipment coming in with more mass than the reactor. Its going to be pretty close anyway.

sorry, i meant don't bring gas core reactors into the discussion about making things 'in line' thats all, not suggesting not to include them. ANd yes, i've made a big spreadsheet with all your default values and such so I could play with them and bring them 'in line' in my game, so well aware of your values for core temp, etc. In any case, to the point of balancing, lets talk power generation too: If you alter the masses slightly (particularly of the jet mass) then i agree, in order to bring the 1.25 reactor + jet in your mod up to LV-N stock values, you need to increase the thermal power output by 10. Specifcally , if you made (this would be so much easier if I knew how to post a spreadsheet) the 1.25 part Reactor mass = 2, Jet mass = .25, and the thermal power 10x greater (move it from 25 to 250) then your NTR is directly in line with stock- you get a total mass of 2.25, a thrust of 55.7, and a T/M ratio of 24 (its T/w ratio is slightly worse than stock, but its ISP is better - its pretty close in any case). in general, across the board, if you modify jet mass per my previous post, and up the thermal power by about a factor of 10, everything lines up with stock for solid core reactors (and you can do the same with gas core to keep them in line). Which leaves you with your issue about generator power. the 3.5 meter reactor is producing 45GW. All I can say is this is essentially irreconcilable if you use 'our universe' values. I mean Kerbin has a density of tungsten and Kerbal is a yellow star thats about the size of Earth. Nothing in this universe lines up exactly with our values. If you want your NTR reactors to be comparable with stock, you need to address this somehow. Or you could hide the factor of 10 in a conversion from thermal power to thrust. Basically you need to use a different constant than what we use for our universe's constants. One last option would be to leave all the thrust values alone but make everything weigh 10 times less (but then people would need to put 10 reactors on a vessel to achieve the same thrust) - so you become a part hog. I dont' know what to tell you, other than I love what you are doing with your mod, but I'm going to use thermal powers that put the reactor in line with LV-N so I can play with your mod in a way thats compatible w/ stock. Seperate question: Whats your rationale for the values you use in your core temperatures of the AM reactors - why did you choose to make AM reactors have core temperatures that scale with size? I thought that was a wierd choice, because ISP is wildly dpendent on size as a result, rather than thrust. Since I was moding your stuff anyway, I altered those values so that the core temps of AM reactors were consistant, but reduced the thermal power to keep thrusts and weights 'reasonable' (if such a thing as reasonable exists for AM reactor outputs - honestly, my values are probably way to low). Just curious. -seyv PS - if somone could tell me the best way to link a spreadsheet, I could have a better time explaining some of these suggestions.

Sure, i have some suggestions on how to bring things in line. I wouldnt bring in gas core reactors, because the NERVA stock engines are clearly solid core based upon ISP and temperature, and you need to be in-line with those. They aren't as out of wack as some poeople think - mostly their T/W ratio is off, but most of the engines in KSP have T/W ratios that are too high. Anyway, I think I can help, but to make it clear I need to post spreadsheets. Whats the best way to do that in the forum? Alternatively I can mail you privately. -G PS - in the meantime, before I figure out how to post spreadsheets, suggest the following as ideas. First, thermal rocket mass = 6 is a major area where you are unfairly hurting performance. its drastically hindering T/W ratio of small reactors. The 0.625 reactor is just pathetic. Simplest method of fixing it is set the weights to zero and purely govern the performance of the NTR by the reactor (which you are essentially doing now). My modded values take this step. However, there is a nicer more elegant solution I'm still playing with. However, its a hard code thing you would have to implement, I can't do it by moding your part values. Basically, the idea is you modify the thermal rocket part such that its weight covers the size of the expansion cone, but more importantly, includes the heat exchangers and pumps moving the reaction mass past the hot reactor coolant. So, basically small thermal rocket parts weigh much much less than big thermal rocket parts, BUT they are limited in the amount of thermal power they can pump through them at once. So you put some value into the thermal rocket part that is equivallent to a throttable fuel flow rate (the way chemical rockets work in ksp) where the 'fuel' is thermal power. The rocket part can only throttle up so high based upon whatever value you give it in that field in the part description. So basically if you hook up a 0.625 size jet to a 3.5 size reactor, it can only move (in your current setup) 1.125 thermal power through it, irrespective of the fact that the reactor has 1500 thermal power to spare. That limits its thrust. But it weighs alot less. So little rockets using little reactors still have reasonable thrust to mass ratios, and everything is self consistent.Also, if you do the same thing with generators (use thermal power to run them, and throttle them), then hooking a big rocket and a big generator to a single reactor means you can run your rocket full throttle or your generator full throttle but not both.

First, there is a thing called playability- hence why ion engines in stock are wildly olverpowered. Second, NERVA engines in stock are mildy overpowered. Real NTR (Solid core) have a thrust/weight ratio of about 5 in the newest desgins. Real chemical engines come in around 100. About a 20 1 to difference. Calculate the numbers in this mod and get back to me. Third, if the author's goal is to integrate it with stock, then stock is the baseline.