Nertea

I am working on this in parallel with FFT to some extent. I dusted off the code this morning and realized that I hadn't run it since 1.1, so I need to spend some time rejigging things to work in 1.1+. I'm thinking of trying to release a type of testing build in a week or two with the basic simulation aspect more or less finished. The thing that was last giving me the most grief was getting the simulation reliably working in the VAB, so I might leave that out.

Yeah I don't have fun names for everything yet (and yeah, it should be Heinlein). NSWR consumes a small amount of electricity to use its magnetic nozzle (check the model, it has those telltale bronze rings). It's likely that in a functional NSWR, the propellant would be plasma-fied and a magnetic nozzle would help to keep the exhaust from cooking the nozzle. ISRU will be happening whenever, really. I know what fuels I need to produce in the "final" version of the mod already (yay spreadsheet), I just need to work on models for them. I'll probably work on that at some point. It shouldn't be impossible to insert the AM loading screen bit just before the KCT interface if KCT is installed. Back now! it was great, very relaxing, though a bit hot... All these engines more or less have to go in the same pack because of fuel commonalities. I would rather minimize the need to share tankage between dissimilar mods... it's a real headache. Keeping the separation means that the only tanks I need to share are the LH2 ones, which are already shared with CryoEngines, so it's simple enough. That's a big big torus! Nice. Stocky thing. If you have a lot of heat in some part of your vessel, when entering/exiting analytic mode (> 1000x timewarp), there can be a redistribution of that heat into parts with lower thermal tolerances, and some overheating.

Hah, it's a little less crazy now that I fixed the fuel ratios... Maybe 1/4 the DV and 1/2 the TWR. Plus now it needs power for AM storage and such, so Th effective potency is quite a bit below the version in that screenshot.

I've cleaned up and polished a bunch of things to create an initial testing release so I can get some feedback when I'm away, you can get it on my git page. Some release notes: All costs, masses, and other specs are quite WIP, particularly costs. I'm interested in feedback on these for sure Recovering a vessel does not correctly refund AM Launching a vessel from the launch pad vs the VAB/SPH does not correctly debit AM You can edit the AM factory specification for testing by editing FFTSettings.cfg in the GameData folder if you wish Some art is unfinished; check the issues list before letting me know (you'll most notice the advanced AM storage container and the plasma core AM engine) CTT is highly recommended if playing career Heat Control/NF Electrical might be useful considering the power needs/heat generation of some parts Additionally, note that the obscene fuel cost of anything using fusion fuels is something I'd really like input on. As this is a CRP resource managed by KSPI, this has to be negotiated, but just for reference, CRP defines He3 cost as 525/unit and Tritium cost as 188/unit. This is possibly too much. For reference, Deuterium is defined as 0.256/unit and standard LH2 is 0.03675/unit. Git also contains the source for the plugin component of course.

That does seem to reveal a bug - that code is supposed to only run on OnStart to configure the total energy use. However it's supposed to operate on max fuel amount, not fuel amount. Good find.

There's some room for something like that in an advanced implementation of certain engines - the ACMF engine and the two z-pinch engines recover some driver power using thermal conversion from absorbed neutrons in the radiation shield. Does it add a huge amount to gameplay at this point? Not hugely, considering that there would still be driver power needed for both engines (recovery doesn't seem like it's 100%). I'd rather see how the "simple" implementation works first :). Well, the bussard ramjet will be kinda covered when i make a magnetic scoop, but reactionless drives are totally out :).

That did the trick! Thanks @blowfish! I actually don't even need to go to the flow rate per second, I just need the unit flow rate, which I can then multiply by the sum of all fuel ratios. Dividing the Ec required by that number gets me what I want for the cfg Ec ratio.

I'm trying to calculate the electric charge ratio to put in an engine cfg for an engine that has multiple propellants with varying ratios. No matter what I try my equations don't seemt o match up with what I get ingame, so I thought I'd post here. I have this easily working for a single propellant engine (like the stock ion engine) but multiple fuels stump me. I'll explain my approach. First calculate the mass flow rate for the engine: mass flow rate (t/s) = thrust (kN) / (specific impulse (s) * g0) Then for each fuel (let's call them A and B), I then calculate the fractional fuel consumption for each fuel. fuel frac A = (fuel ratio A / sum of all fuel ratios) fuel frac B = (fuel ratio B / sum of all fuel ratios) Then I calculate the unit flow rate for each propellant: unit flow rate A (u/s) = (mass flow rate (t/s) * fuel frac A ) / density A (t/u) unit flow rate B (u/s) = (mass flow rate (t/s) * fuel frac B ) / density B (t/u) Then I sum the fuel consumption total flow rate (u/s) = unit flow rate A (u/s) + unit flow rate B (u/s) Then multiply the inverse by the desired electricity consumption charge ratio = 1 / (total flow rate (u/s)) * desired EC use (u/s) That works well for single propellants, but for multiple propellants it really screws up - I don't even get the same unit flow rates from the math above as the VAB shows ingame. And the charge use is of course totally off. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I expect it's something in how I handle the ratios between fuels but Im kinda stumped!

Bit more work - I got the revert to launch/editor working just fine, and completed the launch UI. The only two remaining plugin-related problems are therefore: Returning the antimatter from a recovered vessel to the pool Hijacking the launch button in the space centre to do this too. Everything else seems to be more or less as I want it

I discovered this one the other day while cannibalizing some code for the other day. I'll put it in the to-fix list. Ec usage is constant no matter what the amount in the tank is, so that's not a problem if I'm understanding you right. Added as an issue so I remember: https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/CryoTanks/issues/9

@blowfish, @Angel-125, it's just a toolbar button that pretends it's a building. I don't really want to take on the task of modeling a whole new building until much, much later in this process :P.

I had a lot of fun with these. Quite different than anything I've modeled before. This guy is done too. Took forever, for such a limited-use engine. I had flipped the LH2/AM ratios in the config before, which is why the performance was so great. Now that the AM use is correct, it's a lot harder to use it (needs so many tanks...). Certainly now requires an "advanced" tank that can store more than 50u. More or less finalized the UI for the AM factory "building". Also most of the vessel AM loading logic is done too, but I can't seem to get the revert to VAB logic to return the used resources yet... may need to get help there. I'm going on vacation in a few days so no more work for 2-3 weeks. Had hoped to get something playable for testing by then, but it doesn't look like it'll be done by then. Still have to finish the plasma core engine's textures, make another AM tank and fix all the plugin issues.

Few more engines. Mini-mag Orion, which pulses a large charge into a small fissionable target, compressing it to critical density and detonating it. The resulting plasma is captured by the magnetic nozzle for thrust. The fusion z-pinch engine is basically the same thing, but with a larger compression ratio and a pellet of fusion fuels. Did the effects as well.

Some of that is due to the efforts of people like @Streetwind and @Fraz86, so credit where credit is due :). But yes that is always my goal - to present each technology in a way that shows off a key advantage and a key disadvantage, and hopefully create interesting gameplay. Luckily most technologies tend to create their own categorizations MTF/MIF pulsed: Low system complexity compared to NEP but higher launch mass and size. Expensive fuels. Z-pinch pulsed: Bulky compared to most fusion systems but lower power use reduces barrier to entry, better TWRs Pure fusion: tends to be smaller than pulsed systems, but typically have expensive fuel costs and poor TWRs AM-initiated: lower mass vs. pulsed fusion/fission, but very high cost of AM isn't great Pure AM: very high cost of AM isn't great, but theoretically the best otherwise. I can do a lot better once I finish Radioactivity, because the radiation emissions from each type are good differentiators as well. Today I wrote a small AM tank plugin - this implementation will basically have your AM burn off when you run out of charge on your ship, currently at about a rate of 1u/s. The AM is immediately converted to large amounts of heat (about 1 MJ per unit to start), which will probably allow you to recover from a small leak, but not a large one (boom!). We assume that the tanks have been designed to vent with some small efficiency when power is lost. Also got the beam core unwrapped, which was a pain. Starting to design the two z-pinch engines as well, they'll be nominally 3.75m mounts, but will have protruding larger capacitor banks to add some bulk.

The challenge of creating the community tech tree is creating meaningful progression in cases where mods are installed and others are not installed. Sometimes that works out great, sometimes it doesn't. Compressing the electric engines tech tree damages progression in that area for the sake of something nebulous and not that useful (and high impulse plasma engines do have advantages over entry-level fusion :S). I'd rather spend time and effort ensuring that various engine technologies have their own strengths and weaknesses, so that choosing a path is more interesting. https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/HeatControl/issues?utf8=✓&q=is%3Aissue is%3Aopen I have several phases on my plan document. AM and AM-catalysed engines with support tanks (this is pretty close to done) Pulsed fusion/fission engines (MTF, MIF, Z-pinch fission/fusion) ISRU components Other fusion drives (ICF, magnetically confined, magnetic mirror cells) A dev release should happen after phase 1. A real release probably happens after phase 3.

I can't repro this, could you provide more information? In LH2O mode, it weighs 326 tons... because it has 280 tons of fuel in it. In LH2 mode it weighs 36 tons with 80 tons of fuel, for a total of 116ish tons.

Good catch, I'll fix this for the next version. Adding a manufacturer as a filter category needs work to add an Agency properly. Not really interested in doing this at the moment, plus, I heard some time back that there was some sort of crazy bug that if you added a new agency and it was part of an active contract, then you removed the mod providing it, it would nuke your save. That'd be awkward, so I guess I have to find out whether that's still a problem.. Lots of cfg work goes into these and sometimes we miss these things. Particularly if we use a stock part as a template. Probably falls in a "maybe if I have time" thing. Would have to investigate how it works and figure out how its done. That's probably the biggest bug in here. I'll address that. But you should get a gold star for probably the most... precise set of comments I've ever got

Uh, I draw them more or less side by side with other parts so they're the same. The main limitation is honestly how difficult it is to store and produce antimatter. I'm going to model antimatter production on Kerbin with a pseudobuilding that is unlocked after Antimatter Power is researched. It will produce AM slowly (maybe 10-20u per year at start) and have a maximum storage capacity for a couple years' fuel. Similar to other buildings it is upgradeable a couple of times to increase production rate and storage. With some future development there could be an actual physical building, but that's a bunch more work than a simple plugin. We'll just assume it's part of the research facility for now. You will need to pull AM from the storage to launch ships containing it (hijacked the launch button if your ship has AM tanks on it). Sure you can timewarp to get it but eh... I'm kinda of the opinion that if that's what you want to do, you can do that. The other fuels are basically Nuclear Salt Water, FissionTargets, Deuterium, He3 and LH2. (Tritium will probably not be in the initial build, nor will FusionTargets - those need other engines). LH2 is covered by CryoTanks' patches. Deuterium should get extracted in a similar way at a lower rate. NuclearSaltWater and FissionTargets will be produced from a new part that will take EnrichedUranium as a feedstock, so to ISRU these you'll need to have a small production chain to use NFT parts to get EnrichedUranium, then smelt it into the specialized fuels. That's the only production chain I'll ever make :P. I'll do a big magnetic scoop for particles that will get spaced based particles, like H2, minor amounts of He3 and tiny amounts of AM. I'll do a similar atmospheric scoop for getting more He3 from gas giants. That limits new parts to a maximum of 3, a 3.75m particle scoop, a 2.5m atmospheric scoop and some kind of nuclear factory. Should be doable. Possibly some kind of detector for stuff, though for anything atmospheric I'll just patch the new It's not after, it's on a different branch. The names in CTT are nominal and relatively generic. It could be called "fancy plasma propulsion" or something like that and have the same effect. If you want an experience with realistically labeled tech nodes, grab ETT or something similar. Let's add some more models though. Here's a beam core antimatter rocket, which more or less reacts equal amounts of AM and LH2. It's ridiculous in power, size, mass and coolness. Just kidding about the coolness. It runs hot. This isn't even enough radiators... But that ship is getting a TWR of 8 with 850,000 m/s of DV in that shot, so it could handle more radiators without breaking a sweat. And lastly (and the last AM engine) is the plasma-core antimatter engine, which basically just dumps a bunch of LH2 into a small amount of AM and dumps the resulting plasma mess out the back. Has a low and high density mode for high thrust/low efficiency or vice versa.

It's actually pretty thick with multiple layers of magnets and insulation (i did a cross section cable on the exit point and it was fun). What would you like to see? I don't plan on doing anything that complex with ISRU.

I am not really interested in modeling any kind of radioactive decay... doesn't add much to gameplay without creating a whole nuclear breeding/extraction economy, and KSPI Find me some fun concept art and maybe! Valid stuff, might do some of it whenever I feel like sinking a bunch of time into boring trusses. Why don't the surface mount parts help though? Theses two are pretty much done! Finished off the large nuclear target storage boxes: This antimatter tank is also pretty much done. Looks pretty nice ingame, left size is the ez-stack version , you can independently toggle the upper and lower support structures to make a nice stack of rings. Started some work on engine effects too - the old pulse plugin was updated to work in 1.1.3, and somewhat improved. Basically the throttle setting varies the pulse rate between 1 and 5 Hz - completely graphical, no real pulsed impulse (headache for MJ and KER compatibility and the thrust on these isn't very high so doesn't seem too bad). This one's pretty fun too.

I don't keep a database of what mod adds what, but Advanced Solar Technology and its children certainly are populated by NF Solar. (1) was requested by RoverDude for future projects, (2) is similarly targeted. (3) was requested by one of the big rocket mods, (5) I thought I had some stuff in, guess I was wrong, (6) was requested by IR folks.

That looks very wrong. The mod should go in your GameData folder. Should look like this: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\CryoTanks\Patches\CryoTanksFuelTankSwitcher.cfg

Mark IV Version 2.2.1 Fixed fuel capacity for basic Mk4 fuselages Fixed CTT patch assigning some parts to nonexistant nodes Fixed an issue where multiple blade rotators would conflict on lift fans

The issue with targeting LF-only tanks is that you collaterally target spaceplane tanks, which have different mass/cost/toughness ratios than lifter tanks. I haven't come up with a great solution for this. If you want to try to do something, look at CryoTanksFuelTankSwitcher.cfg. It handles all the switching - you could try to copy the general idea and create a proper @PART[*]:HAS[]... expression to only target lifter fuel tanks.

Small update, primarily with better handling of NFE integration. NTR patch adjustment thanks to @hab136 Cost adjustments to all the parts. Yes.