db48x

It shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a fairly simple explanatory graph along the lines of the one you've posted. I suppose by spreadsheet you mean that you intend to produce a device which will enable the user to predict in advance how much waste heat they will need to be able to dissipate, and how the number of radiators they use will affect the efficiency of their generators. If so, let's leave that to one side; I suggest that the best way to go would be a new UI in the editors rather than a spreadsheet. So, the graph. On the left are our (local) sources of heat, reactors and solar panels. On the right is the great sink: all of space-time, represented in miniature (well, all of it within your light-cone, but we can abstract that detail away). In between are all the artifices of human ingenuity which either alter the energy flowing from source to sink from one form to another or which performs some useful task using that energy. Most of these artifices do not connect directly to the reactors, instead drawing electrical power from a generator. Similarly, these artifices are only capable of dumping a small quantity of their waste heat directly to the great sink; the bulk of it must go out through a radiator designed specifically for that purpose. Each connection is sized in proportion to the quantity of energy flowing across it, and when the sum of the energy entering at the left is greater than the sum of the energy leaving to the right then the craft must shut down some or all of its systems lest it suffer some damage. (That damage, incidentally, would serve to rapidly increase the rate at which the craft can dump waste heat directly into the universe; the rules of the game do not allow you to remain in an unbalanced state forever, or indeed for very long.) Now, the reason why I suggest that this not be a spreadsheet is that there is a clever feedback mechanism built into the rules of the universe. When the graph is unbalanced, the first thing that happens is that the internal temperature of the craft begins to rise; it is retaining waste heat. This causes the craft and it's radiators to be more efficient; they can dump heat out into the universe more quickly. Eventually, the craft will reach equilibrium and the heat released will exactly equal the heat absorbed. Your goal as a spacecraft designer is to arrange things so that the entire craft does not need to heat up to the same temperature as the inside of your antimatter reactor in order to dissipate the heat released by that same antimatter reactor. Fractal_UK: an in-game UI that drew this graph and let you see how the energy flows will change as you turn various components on and off would blow everyone's socks off.

Yep, it's working

We'd be happy to help, but can you be a little more specific?

I guess I don't understand what you would gain by moving the generator away from the reactor. Perhaps moving the center of mass? You could move the center of lift instead. You wouldn't want to run a pipe full of molten sodium down the middle of a fuel tank or crew compartment. Likewise, you wouldn't run a pipe full of rocket exhaust down from a combustion chamber through a fuel tank and into a rocket nozzle. I'll grant you that if the rocket uses cryogenic fuels then KSPs fuel crossfeed is already a bit unrealistic, but there's no need to make it worse Waste heat is specifically that heat which low temperature and spread out through the ship. Sure, a real ship will have heat exchangers to cool the air in the crew quarters, and an ammonia transport system out to the radiators, but you have to abstract something.

Negates what, exactly? This is no different than how a chemical engine is built; the rocket nozzle goes directly below the combustion chamber for a reason. That said, Fractal_UK mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he was looking into some heat pipes to add. He wasn't specific, but I imagine there'll be one for radially attaching generators, and possibly some for changing diameters or something. Moving heat around is difficult though, and if you put a fuel tank or something in the way it would be a bit unrealistic. Moving electricity around is a lot more straight-forward, so you may want to look at the plasma thruster and the DT Vista; they're powered by electricity instead of heat. Higher tech == more options.

Antimatter can only be collected from what is trapped in the magnetic fields of a planet; the larger field the more it can trap and the faster you can collect it. Also, antimatter annihilates on contact with normal matter, so there isn't much of it floating around in an atmosphere. Use the magnetometer to measure magnetic field strengths and find out how much antimatter you can collect. As for the fusion reactor, you'll need a fairly hefty external source of power to start those. You can leave it behind if you like.

There's no longer a Science resource or a menu button for explicit transfers. Whenever you visit a craft with an active science lab, KSPI will calculate the amount of science the lab has generated since you were last there. it then adds that directly to your total, which you can view back at the R&D Center. Fractal_UK has already mentioned that the next version will add a message when this happens, so that it's more obvious. I've been wondering though if there is any way to annotate a craft with information that you can retrieve even while the craft isn't loaded. If that's possible, then the plugin could just store the science/day rate on the craft and then bump the science total periodically whenever the simulation is running. Another alternative is just to persist the science rate keyed off of the craft id. I think the only way that could get out of sync is if the player removes a craft from the tracking center.

It's very kompact and versatile. They can even use it to make antimatter if you have a few gigawatts of power to spare.

A related idea is to attach thermocouples to a nuclear reactor. They're less efficient than the turbines, but lighter and smaller and thus more suitable for planes and rovers that don't need megawatts or even kilowatts of power. An RTG is just some thermocouples jacketing a can of plutonium, so perhaps that's a way forward. Make the thermocouples tall and narrow, with a radiating fin on the back and it'll even have the correct look, if you use radial symmetry.

Alcubierre drives and computer cores are each upgraded individually.

That's a great looking ship. Would you care to share it? db48x

The chart was for vacuum; you're testing in atmo.

It adds new nodes to the end of the tree; there's an annotated screenshot in the first post. Enjoy!

That's a brilliant design Skoot. I love it.

I'd like to see these charts using a consistent intensity scale (although it'd be pretty difficult to get Jool/Kerbol and the other bodies onto the same scale, so perhaps two different scales). That will make the differences between the bodies much more apparent at a glance; currently you have to compare them strictly by the numbers since the shapes are identical.

Ah, I see. I've updated the wiki to be less unduly positive, and added a longer explanation on the MegaJoules page: https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Megajoules

It sounds like I may have misunderstood it when I added that to the wiki; I haven't actually launched any solar sats myself. Fractal_UK, would you clarify how this currently works, and how it's supposed to work? Would it be correct to say that if you are generating and transmitting a large amount of power, the receiver will receive it as ElectricCharge but can spend it as MegaJoules?

I'm having a great time with this mod, thanks FractalUK. I suggest adding a surface-mount radiator suitable for probes and rovers though.