loki130

Part 3: Meeting the Neighbors Last time we saw the first crewed spaceflight by Valentina near the end of year 7 of the program. Many consider this the crowning achievement of the program thus far, and the Victory program will continue with further crewed flights, but within the mission planning team much of the focus is on the uncrewed Pathfinder program and its planned followups. The data returned by these missions promises to answer questions pondered on Efil since the early days of astronomy and science, but opens just as many to be investigated in followup missions.

Version 0.2.3 github Changelog: - Added mod support: - Boring Crew Services: airbag placed in advanced parachutes for now, will need to consider a more general approach for balloons and inflatables eventually - TAC Life Support first pass: parts added, not sure how the overall balance plays yet - Attempted to get unsupported parts upgrades to go in Lost and Found, not sure it works great so far. - Adjusted patch ordering to get it to play nice with KCT, you still get some logspam the first time you research a tech in a new save, but it clears with the next scene change. For TAC-LS, I placed Air filters, water splitter, and all the container parts in Orbital Modules, sabatiers and water purifiers in Orbital Habitation, and carbon extractors in Integrated Life Support, let me know if that seems to work okay. I'll still need to track down parts for TAC-LS added by other mods like planetary bases.

I've seen it before but never quite tracked down the exact cause, it seems to relate somehow to how KCT determines tech prerequisites and I thought I was rid of it but I think messing around more with the stock nodes to get the lost and found tech has brought it back, lemme try a few things.

Version 0.2.2 github - Switched the id of starting node back to 'start' to fix issues with part unlocking and adjusted stock nodes patch accordingly Pretty sure that issue should be fixed To do the conversion, I save the tree as both a yongetech tree and a stock tree, then use a little python script to pull all the part unlocks from the yongetech tree and turn them into a modulemanager patch, and the stock tree and patch are what actually go into the mod. You can find the yongetech tree and python script on the github. Trouble is of course that this means that most parts are added in one big patch (though any parts instantiated by modulemanager patches don't appear in the editor, so I have to track those down and write out dedicated patches for them, which is most of what's in the additional patches folder), so if multiple people are working on additions that way it might get a bit tricky to consolidate them together.

I'd personally rather not clutter up the center of the tree like that, and I'm also not inclined to charge extra science for parts that don't strictly have any necessary gameplay function

I suppose if anyone made localization files I could add them in, but I don't think it would work to add them based on the icons, many are used for multiple nodes and some not really for the original intended meaning of the icon I haven't gotten around to them yet, I figured I'd probably put them in the construction nodes based vaguely on the size of rocket they're intended to hold

Does anyone happen to know if there's a way to change the stock R&D background texture? Might be nice to add labels to the main branches.

Version 0.2.1 github - Properly updated the main parts patch for Knes and CNAR compatibility, oops - Implemented AlexSkylark's adjustments and new lost and found node in place of having the stock nodes sitting on the left side of the tree - anyone wanting to make a patch note that I've also added the gptt_exclude node to hold parts not intended to appear in the tree (so they don't end up in lost and found), which then gets removed before gameplay. - Added the Sterling wind turbine, but will need to revisit the other World Power parts later

CNAR and Taerobee do add some good early parts, and I should probably add wacapella, the main thing that USI sounding rockets specifically adds is the starter avionics, batteries, payload bay, parachute, and science parts. I will probably take a go at TAC-LS and kerbalism support at some point soon, they don't really add many parts, the difficulty is 1, tracking down extra parts added by mods like planetary bases when these mods are installed; 2, dealing with things like upgrades or experiment unlocking that I think kerbalism does; and 3, seeing how well parts placed based on their performance with USI-LS work with these mods

Hi, thanks I think I added Sterling Systems before I added the wind power nodes, so yeah, they should probably be moved now. In general Extraplanetary Construction has served as a bit of a dumping ground for various mod parts I'm not super familiar with, it probably needs to be revisited eventually. The wind power nodes were made specifically for MMSEV, which simulates wind direction and speed, with the potential for windmills to break in high winds; the advantage of vertical turbines in that mod is that they are of course agnostic to wind direction and (mostly) have better tolerance to high winds. If there are going to be more wind power parts from different mods then a more generic approach might make sense, though it doesn't necessarily have to break down by size, the greater bulk and cost of larger parts can serve as its own balance even if they unlock early.

Version 0.2 github - Added mod support: - Knes: Mostly works quite well with some good early rockets, but a few odd parts; overpowered rcs units placed in Electric Engine Concepts on the logic that we could imagine they're resistojets? - Completely NonAgressive Rockets: Provides some good early rockets, though the command parts don't quite fit. - Fixes: - Moved a number of NFT and RLA pod parts accidentally placed in the capsules line to avionics - Switched Wind Power to depend on Power Storage rather than the reverse. - Balance: - Shifted around some of the BDB Leo service module parts: those with crew capacity are moved into Orbital modules (as well as the Kane service module for now), the rest into Advanced RCS. Still not totally happy having USI life support recyclers available so early, but don't want to make them inaccessible at the point you're using the Leo capsule, might look into patching in a part upgrade for that. - Moved the BDB TNSS-5BN power and comms section from Solar Power to Orbital Relays - DMagic Soil Moisture Sensor moved to Solar System Relays, the experiment is just a free bonus now I suppose. - DMagic Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons moved to Surface Geology, I did not notice it was a surface-only experiment. - BDB Micro Goo Radiometer moved to Instrument Miniaturization - BDB Radek-716 moved to Space Environment Research and MRNR-340 moved to Radiation Studies - Lynx Drill moved to Resource Extraction - BDB BE-SLR227 reflector moved to Gravimetry - Halved the costs for Oceanic Exploration and Exooceanography given that they're both a bit part-bare so far. Think that's probaby good enough to add to spacedock and ckan now

(doublepost, forum weirdness)

Good mods to look into, though I'm not certain where to put the knes shuttle; in general I'm not sure I've found a good solution to shuttle parts, because are lot could probably be best considered aircraft parts, which I want to be available fairly quickly, so it then it maybe feels like shuttle parts are a bit too accessible early on but there's no clear distinction to draw between aircraft and shuttle parts. As to mapping stock nodes onto the tree, I've made a conscious decision not to, they mostly just don't have a good correspondance and so unsupported mod parts would end up in very weird places. For now it's more important to me that any parts on the tree are placed well than that all parts are on the tree regardless of mod list. Though again the stock nodes are still present as hidden techs to at least give you the option to unlock any unsupported parts that turn up there. ksp-techtree-edit has a graphic interface which makes it a little easier, but the YongeTech plugin it's supposed to work with doesn't really function well anymore so I had to figure out a bit of a hack to convert it to modulemanager patches. But yeah, it is basically placing parts one-by-one: the general layout of the tree was decided mostly based on the combination of BDB, NFT, FFT, CryoEngines, and Airplane Plus, and then parts from most other packs were placed where they best fit in that layout, though I made a few extra branches here and there for a few mods where they're a bit more unique (like wind power from MMSEV). If you look through the layout and design description it gives you a bit of a sense of the rules for how parts are placed, for engines it's mostly down to Isp but with some considerations for size and TWR, for structural and fuel tanks parts it's basically just radius, etc.

Part 2: A Time of Firsts As year 3 of the Efil Space Program comes to a close, the mission planners and scientific advisors gather to consider their next moves. Though they’ve demonstrated the ability to place objects in orbit, Unity 1 was little more than a technical exercise; the immediate priority should be followup missions with more equipment to study the environment in space around Efil and test the technology for larger and more reliable launches. But in the longer term, two clear goals emerge: first, the study of Efil’s parent planet Anehta and its sister moons Enots, Eulb, and Elad, long the subject of observation and admiration from the ground; and second, developing the technical groundwork and confidence for crewed exploration of space.

Probably, and spacedock too, just wanted to wait to see if any obvious issues popped up

I think this is because most parts are added to the tree with one big modulemanager patch run after everything else (because rather than adding parts mod-by-mod with individual patches like a lot of other trees are done, I made the tree in techtree edit and then made a python script to pull parts from there and put them together in one big patch) and HideEmptyTechTreeNodes is seeing the tree before that. I'll make a note about the incompatibility, I think it shouldn't be an issue to play without it because if you have at least BDB and NFT there shouldn't be many empty intermediary nodes at least in the earlier parts of the tree, and I've already made a lot of the more mod-specific offshoot techs hideable.

This is a campaign I’ll be playing in the lovely Kcalbeloh planet pack at 2.56x scale and home-switched to Efil, a moon of the planet Anehta, orbiting the Aralc binary star system, which in turn has a high orbit of the Kcalbeloh black hole. This is perhaps a somewhat less interesting planet and a bit less central a location to explore the system than Suluco, but I though the Anehta system might make for a more interesting early game, and it’s actually easier to launch early interstellar flyby probes from Aralc’s high perch in the system. I also made a quick patch to bring the science value multipliers for the neighboring bodies in the Aralc system down to be more in line with the stock system (and nerf Kcalbeloh a bit). In terms of graphics mods, I’m using Parallax 2.0, EVE and scatterer with volumetric clouds using the experimental Kcalbeloh patch (which helpfully covers most of the bodies I’ll be encountering most from Efil), TUFX with blaackrack’s config, and Deferred. One of the main goals of this campaign is to test out a custom tech tree I’m working on, the Gradual Progression Tech Tree built to give a more gradual RP-1-like early game progression while still working well with more stock gameplay and taking advantage of a number of popular modpacks. The full list of parts packs, at least to start with, includes: Airplane Plus Bluedog Design Bureau Coatl Aerospace Probes Plus CryoEngines DeepFreeze DMagic Orbital Science Far Future Technologies Heat Control JX2 Antennas Kerbal Atomics Kerbal Foundries Kerbal Planetary Base Systems Kerbal Reusabiity Expansion Mk2 Expansion Near Future Technologies collection Planetside MMSEV Restock and Restock Plus Station Parts Expansion Redux Sterling Systems Thermals Supplementary Electric Engines USI Malemute and Karibou USI Sounding Rockets In terms of other career/difficulty mods, I’ll be playing with Bureaucracy, but with no kerbonaut retirement, no budget cap, and with a bit of reputation decay, amounting to about 8% per year (also the length of months in Bureaucracy seems to be tied to the home planet rotation, so they're about 4 times longer here than in the stock system); Kerbal Construction Time with the very slower settings, and as a personal rule I won’t get any upgrades to produce science; USI Life Support, but not the whole MKS collection; Mandatory RCS; and doubled DSN and antenna range (on top of the modifier given by sigma dimensions) to make interstellar probes a little more viable earlier on. I will be using Mechjeb, because I don’t particularly feel the need to do a hundred manual launches to prove I can, and I won’t be using any reliability or parts failure mods because I couldn’t find any that really worked well with the range of parts mods I’m using. My general intention here is to have a complete but not intensive record of the whole campaign, including at least one shot from every mission, excepting perhaps repeated identical launches of relays or orbital refueling/resupply runs (and I may very well get a mod like KSTS to handle those at some point). But it’ll be a while before we get to anything like those; for the first few years of the game, I'll be limited largely to suborbital sounding rockets. Contents Part 1: Climbing the Sounding Rocket Ladder

Github Download Spacedock Download Requires Module Manager Distributed under a Creative Commons 4.0 NonCommercial-Attribution-ShareAlike license, and uses some tech icons originally created for Community Tech Tree by Nertea, with the same license. It was built using ksp-techtree-edit, but reworked to function through MM patches and so does not require the YongeTech plugin. Additional Credits: @Alex Starlight for node adjustment and lost-and-found tech @Pxtseryu for autostrut fix and various patches @Spike88 for kerballoons fix Jade-TheCat on github for FTLDrive-Continued compatibility Gradual Progression Tech Tree is a tech tree built with 3 broad goals in mind: Take better advantage of some major part packs, in particular BDB and Nertea’s mods, without being held back by concerns over compatibility with different mod combinations. Make tech progression a bit more “rational”, focusing on increased capabilities rather than arbitrary distinctions of size that inconvenience the player without substantially affecting what they can achieve. Give an RP-1-like feeling of early progression, advancing gradually from early sounding rockets to first satellites to crewed spaceflight, while still working with the actual gameplay balance rather than getting caught up in historical reenactment. In short, it is a probes-first tree built for mod-heavy campaigns with gradual (but hopefully not painfully slow) progression through more of the eras of early spaceflight. All of the nodes are new, so only parts from supported mods will appear, though as a fallback option there's a Lost and Found tech with 1 science cost, so unsupported mod parts may appear there and you can unlock those whenever it seems appropriate. Aside from the tech tree, GPTT also includes a couple patches to tweak the science value return of the stock magnetomer from 45 to 5 to be more in line with mod magnetometers and the USI sounding rocket experiments all down from 25 to 4 for better balance as starting parts. Compatibility Tree Layout and Design FAQ This is the initial release so the tree still needs a fair bit of testing, both for overall balance and playability and part placement errors; BDB has a lot of multi-function parts and many mod packs add functionality as other mods are installed, so let me know if you see any parts that seem overpowered for their tier or oddly placed, and in general I'm looking for feedback at this point on the overall feel of the tree, and I'm also open to requests for extra mod integration. I'm doing my own playthrough of this tree in the Kcalbeloh system at 2.56x scale and I may start posting mission reports in a separate thread, but that's a rather different starting situation than the stock system. Note, however, that I did this all as a bit of a lark and hyperfocused on it for a while, and it's entirely possible I may move on to other projects at some point, so if that happens, I very much encourage people to fork or otherwise develop on this tree themselves. For now, though, have fun and tell me how it goes.

Wow, this is pretty cool project. I was wondering if you could comment on the feasibility of doing something like this outside of the context of KSP, on any arbitrary terrain--basically, if I wanted to simulate climate on my own fantasy planet, would this be a sensible approach?. How difficult was the process of getting the model set up and including novel terrain? I also see that you made your own server to run the program--do you think it would possible to do something similar, if much much slower, on a typical home computer?

I can't seem to get the size3 stack drill to draw resources from asteroids, even though the other drills seem fine.

Is there any way to get this to work with the deployed payloads of KSTS? I get if that's not practical, just thought I'd ask.

The link in the BDA thread you linked leads to a 404 now.

Anyone else think the SM AFV tank turrets seem a bit...anemic compared to the stock Abrams? I checked in the config and the only major difference I can seem to find is that the AFV turrets don't have a bullet defined

Gonna second the request for a 1.3 build; I'm pretty sure my modded career is too delicate to make it through another update at this point.

The demands of grad school take precedence for me, I'm afraid--though I might have time now I don't want to commit if I might be too busy later. I'll leave you with a final tip that you might be able to create a list of banned parts in the "Janitor's Closet" mod and pass it around to eliminate any OP parts you don't want in the game and also download more mods without cluttering up the parts list too much.