SyberSmoke

To those updating and fixing this. You may wish to look at how it is calculating drag, mass, and impact tolerance. I have recently built some parts and those values went odd. Mainly drag and impact. I built a truss system with each piece having 80m/s IT...when I was done the truss had an IT of 300M/s. This is in contrast to a logical averaging of the parts. Drag also gets a little odd as it looks like the more parts are added...the less drag the part has...or more...it swings.

Ahhh, I see...a shame really but there are better uses of people time then. Thank you for answering that. Hurm...not to sure how to do that. I do remember that some mods are finicky about that sort of thing though...but how would I do it? Oh, it is in the F12 menu...huh. I never messed with that menu so I did not notice it. Hurm...reloading the data base wipes a few mods from the game it looks like. Like Goodspeed fuel...well that is not much of an option I guess.

But would it be impossible or impractical to take that collection of parts and nest the new welded cfg values into the ship file its self. That way a new part, or many new parts do not need to be generated in the parts list? As for the reloading...in most cases that is also true. But in the cases of some modes, like Interstellar, it is recommended that after making a part you exit and reload. I have looked into the welding tool and there are several entries in the thread discussing this same thing. They are fringe instances, but as modding progresses, those instances could increase.

That is not the answer to the question. The part welding mod, as stated in the OP, creates a new part CFG. Read the OP more thoroughly please.

So I have a question: Is there a way to weld a structure with out making a part CFG? Can the welded structure be integrated into the ship file so that when the ship is loaded the welded parts are accounted for and loaded as a welded structure? To expound, welding right now is based around creating individual parts and their cfg's. The problem with this is that those welded parts can be improperly processed creating more parts that the user need to be cleared out of the players game directory. Further more, with the creation of each part the game need to be closed down and restarted depending on the mods the player is using. This makes welding time consuming and cumbersome. I find it rather hard to believe some of the things I have observed. Like the station I am building...I find it hard to believe that Squad would not put in some kind of pause in the physics for a body at rest. A station in orbit that is at rest (Stable orbit with out any outside influences) should not have physics calculated for it...it would be in homeostasis, and that state should only be recalculated when an event changes the objects state (Rotations, Acceleration, Mass Change, addition of elements). Any way...I got off track. If some one would kindly consider the questions posed I would appreciate it. I think you for your time and hope you will be constructive. -Edit- Restructured for clarity since people only skim and do not read for comprehension.

Ahhh...blind am I...fool do I feel...Yes. Though looking I see a thought in the list, reactors. I do like a good reactor...but something no bound by reality..that much. This is something I thought of and sent to RoverDude...figure it may help you guys also as Rover is a little busy. A thought for you...I do not have the skills to do what is needed. So I thought you might t-find this more interesting. Plus...we have so many things starting with a K... ;-D Mineral: Acktonium Originally found by kerbal miners, it was thought to be a kind of rock candy. After a few of the miners tried to eat some becoming deathly sick in the process, it was names Acktonium from the sound of "Ack, that is not a snack." followed by vomiting and all sorts of other unspeakable noises. Acktonium was later looked at by Kerbal scientists who had plenty of snack on hand, and was found to not only react bady with Kerbal physiology but was also unstable releasing particles and slowly breaking down into other elements. When concentrated the Acktonium would also generate a lot of heat, unfortunately the research center was lost when the material went critical as the scientists were busy making smores. But there are always more Kerbals. Reactor Core: The reactor core unit does not hold any Acktonium, instead it acts as a central control and power generating mechanism. The core unit Has nodes for the placement of Acktonium Reactor Chambers or ARC's. The amount of power that the core can generate is directly related to the number and type of ARC's attached to it. But a reactor core is limited in the number of ARC units it can hold, smaller units only holding one while larger units can hold many more. Acktonium Reactor Chamber: The ARC is a self contained modular reactor that has Acktonium in it. ARC units range in capacity from 25 to 100 energy per second based on the Core they are mounted to. The ARC came about when Jeb saw the research and hazards that Acktonium presented. Seeing that this material was too tempting to took some Coffee cans, tubing, some shielding, and made the ARC to keep it out of his own mouth. Later his designs were purchased by Icky Things Inc. and mass produced as a safe and reliable power solution no Kerbal could eat. ARC's are mounted to the Reactor Core radially. The Acktonium in the ARC is guaranteed to be good for a year of continuous operation. After that time the Acktonium is inert and useless. Fortunately while not in use, Acktonium will not decay. ARC's can thusly be used all at once or one unit at a time depending on the mission. The ARC's can also be replaced in flight through the use of an EVA. The spent ARC can be easily removed and a new one installed due to a recent innovation in the design...handles. Spent units can be placed into an ARC Processor to have the Acktonium replaced and the ARC restored to operation...assuming you have mined the Acktonium. ARC Processor: This module, while large (2.5m+ form factor) is a one stop shop for refining Acktonium and putting it into ARC units. It needs a good amount of power to operate, but given the lifespan of an ARC unit while in use, it is worth it to keep ARC's running without having to wait months for a new shipment so you can make your popcorn. Colonial Facility: The Acktonium Power Facility is a second generation colonial structure that takes Acktonium and produces power at a higher efficiency than the Power Distribution Module. It requires a constant flow of Acktonium, but will provide a base with a supply of energy for much of its needs. the APF is useless without a large amount of Acktonium, so it is only recommended that it be used after suitable drilling operation have commenced. --- I Admit it, I am an idea (explative)...any one that wants them can have them for a can of Dr. Pepper...I am so ashamed!

I have one other request once you have some time to think: Crew Tubes. The trusses look excellent and I like the goal of adding on panels also. I use truss systems and often they are the most efficient way to connect hab parts at an angle. The thing that bugs me is none of them (that I have seen) have visual accommodation for crew to move through them. Like your Hex Truss Hub, it has two circular mounting points...but I could see an alternative with a pressurized shell for crew to move through the truss. Your doing excellent work Speedy and crew, keep it up.

True, the second part though was more off the top of my head. Since KSP treats parts as rigid bodies and the joints are the flex points. The thought was to take those nodes that each get a calculation and merge them to make a single spline. The spline then gets the calculation based on node an part values. That way your only messing with one larger value instead of numerous smaller ones.

First, let me start by saying I am aware of part welding and what it does. It is a good idea, but makes a mess that you can not clean up if you want your ships to remain valid. So I am curios (being a layman about all this), could a system be made that allows the player to designate parts to be welded or baked together in the VAB. And then with out making an entirely new part, place that information into the ship file. This way the parts can have the benefits of being welded with out the clutter? OR...(this just popped in my head) Could a mod alter how joints function. So instead of being a breaking point, they instead become a node in a spline. That way the ship does not come apart at the node but instead flexes across the model. After all everything has some flex...it is when the flex becomes to much that things break.

I know this may be an odd thing to say, but have you considered modeling wedgelike or more futuristic structures for station parts? We have oodles and oodles of trusses, connectors, bits, and bobs. What I am thinking are more...inline with OKS functionality, but on the scale of a full on space station. Modular parts that can connect to one another (Built-in docking elements? Turn them on and off...hurm) So say instead of building parts in the VAB, you lift whole sections of prefab, or build them in orbit using EPL (Bigger bits then you can lift...multiple scales?) A thought man...I don't know where it came from but for some reason I want to take my ship past a window of a station and see Kerbals looking out.

Why not treat them as a payload. Use a pair of Clamp-o-Tron Jr., one for the interior of the bay, one for the payload. Then build your payload insert, and pull it out and attach to the station some where. Have may be a command chair and some RCS on the payload...the Kerbal takes a seat, pilots it out of the bay and moves to to a transfer dock. Other option could be Infernal robotics, mount the payload to a piston and hinge. When you want to trade wedges, just start rotating the hinge and extend the piston putting the cargo into a more optimal and open position for EVA transfer. ---------- A thought for Universal Storage...Ladders. Often I have been interested in putting ladders on wedges...but can not. And typically I do not have access to the extending ladders when I really want to add ladders or handholds. Would it be reasonable as a tweak to have an option or button that adds a ladder to the outside of the wedge. May be just a simple L or pair of L's that move with the door. So that the Kerbals have a hand hold of some kind.

Speedy, have you thought about making a truss with solar panels on the exterior of the trusses?

I have a thought for you. 1: Markers: While I am checking for places to land it would be nice after to be bale to assign a marker or flag (Not planted by a Kerbal) to a point on the map. That way I do not need to remember based on geography where I wanted to land...I can just see a nice thing pointing at it. 2: Let MekJeb use the Markers: I admit it, I am lazy some times. Some days I just want to land my parts and not do it my self. After all you drop 10 or more colony components and other things to the same place...it just gets annoying. So it would be nice if the markers could be used as a selection to fill in the data for MekJeb. Just mouse over marker...or marker in a menu and all that pesky Longitude/Latitude stuff is filled in. Ok, that is what I have to say. Hope it gives you ideas. Note: To help make the Zip a little better it would be nice if the MapResourceOverlay folder were in a GameData folder. I use KSP mod Admin and I had to tell it where to put your mod. Also some people that may be new could get lost and put it in the wrong place. Never underestimate what some one can do to muck things up. Edit (Bug): It appears that in the latest version, if you turn off the display while on the surface, then hit escape to access KSP's options in flight, this overrides the prevous option to disable the overlay. When the overlay is on, the KSP Esc menu vanishes while you get a reading from it. This is a little annoying... :-)

I think making the GN drive a limited size option, so it is meant for 1.25m parts specifically. Then offer up GN Capacetors, a way to store GN particles for that speed boost and the Tau Drives for Larger (2.5m+) and smaller (0.625m) options. The other path would be to offer the more...balanced Tau as the only option adding in a condition of it needing EC to run the part. The reason is, if your going with Lore, no one but Celestial Being would have the genuine GN Drive, so any drive the player uses would be the knockoff drive. But that is assuming your interested in adding that lore into the mod.

Basically it is an artificially imposed limit to give them a flaw or to propel the plot line forward. It is in the same vein of thought that the USS Enterprise from Next Gen could take one two warships of some race with out flinching one episode. Then the next time they encounter that race, a couple hits downs the shields and cripples the Enterprise. It is just an arbitrary method to advance the story, that is all.

Gundam Nucleus Drive As for the drives them selves...it is anime...suspend your disbelief. That said It could be a suggestion that radial or inline GN Particle Capacitors (Batteries) also be part of this pack. You may also consider the GN Tau drive. The Tau version, while not a perpetual drive like the GN Drive, uses electricity to generate GN particles. So you could adapt that to larger ships or stations that have solar power or reactors. These could be larger drives since based on the lore, only 5 GN drives were originally made with another three being made after Celestial Being rediscovered how to make them.

Well it may be worth poking around and seeing if there is a stray coder out there willing to give you a hand to do more. It may just require you posting such a request.

I would be careful on the CPU side, I say this because there are two ways to look at each card. Either the card is a form of program or firmware that needs to run on the unit. Or the card is a Sub Processing Unit that is doing its own calculations. I suppose there could be two "resources" but I would not go much more then that. Those being an internal capacity and a CPU resource. Those two would offer some interesting possibilities as as with PC's it would be possible to add in SPU's that could increase the CPU resource pool but takes up space in the unit its self. This leads to some interesting paths for parts. I could see Flash Memory for Science storage, SPU's for analysis of data, Compression modules to reduce bit amounts (Reduce Bits, Increase Multiplier), management units that gives a boost to fuel or power efficiency (Say 5-10%, but enough to be worth having). And that is not even including all of the mods out there. I look forward to seeing what comes of this mod.

Hurm...why would it need an additional mod. If the cards are a resource and the core is a container you could have an add/remove card in the tweakables menu, each card you add increases the functionality of the module, but takes one unit (ore more) of resource space. This could even let you have cards take up more room for more powerful options. Also, you could make it so that the amount of power the unit requires is increased based on the number of cards you have installed (resource space used) that way it is not entirely beneficial to have all the cards you can have in the module as your power draw would be more then necessary. At least that is my thought on it.

I like the look and design of this mod. It is functional and helps to make smaller craft. As a thought, a smaller core (0.625m) would be good as well as a hard drive module so that a small core could be packed with science data and sent back to Kerbin. Or may be even an Analysis unit that can help the crew in transmitting science...or augment the Laboratory.

I am using 0.9pre4. The mod is being installed using KSPMod Admin, all directories look correct. The GameData directory was wiped before installing the new version so no folders were left over. The game does not crash or show any other unexpected behavior then what is described above. That being a resource that should last for days is being devoured in minutes. Huh...well looks like something got worked out as it is now working properly. I do dislike transient errors. I guess if it happens again I will post logs and such. But with it working properly now would there be a point?

This is the interesting part as when I used it, they burned through the can as I entered orbit. So is this some of that 64bit strangeness...or do I just need to move the decimal point and lose the useless decimal accuracy (really it is a game, we do not need precision to the trillionth of a decimal). I can appreciate the accuracy, but it makes reading the numbers difficult. Note, if this was working properly in my case. A command pod should have plenty of food and water. BUT, if I send a ship out with only the pod, the values shown result in the pod being out of food and water. So those values are not working as intended from all tests I have done.

I did not misread them, the whole number value is still one liter of food per second eaten, or two liters of water consumed per second since that is what LS was changed to. Just like the kerbals are producing almost 8 times the waste (Assuming it is poop) as they are consuming. I tested this with a launch and indeed a full 1.25m can of food was gone in less then five minutes of launching. Something that should last much longer. These are the default values, so I can only assume this is a bug. So I would much like to know the intended values so I can correct them to be more inline with the other consumption and production rates.

I have a question, Given the values you have on the Spreadsheet the numbers presented in the config for consumption per second (below) look way off. Especially with a 1.25m food container holding 276 food with a weight of 280kg, amounting to less then 5 minutes of food. FoodConsumptionRate = 1.0817575525E-05 WaterConsumptionRate = 2.0807576966E-05 OxygenConsumptionRate = 0.003521591846326 ElectricityConsumptionRate = 0.0138888888888889 BaseElectricityConsumptionRate = 0.0277777777777778 EvaElectricityConsumptionRate = 0.00185185185185185 CO2ProductionRate = 0.003029853129847 WasteProductionRate = 7.802841362E-06 WasteWaterProductionRate = 2.2876512176E-05 When acording to the spreadsheet...if I am reading it right, consumption should be far less per second of time. O2, Electricity, CO2 all reflect a significantly lower value per second. So why are the Kerbals chowing down so ravenously that they are eating (what I can only guess) it all so fast? Are the numbers off and is there a set of proper values some where that makes the balance a little more sustainable?

The wonderful thing about a game is that it is not reality. So while in reality some parts would not be recoverable (Remember shuttle SRB's were recoverable) we do not need to worry about that when the numbers are all that count. So if an object has a crash tolerance of 4m/s then darn it, all you need are enough chutes on it to get it below that critical threshold. I do agree that people will not need to build 100% recoverable things. But at the same time being able to recover bits and bobs and get some amount of refund is also not much to request.