BrickedKeyboard

Ok, so TLDR, install KW rocketry/Novapunch/AIES. Install the compatibility patch for AIES (not mentioned in the instructions here). Delete the fuel tank folders from AIES, Novapunch, but not the ones from KW rocketry. Install B9 aerospace for the SABRE engines, maybe. This is getting to be a complex set of instructions. It's not just that it is complex, but it varies extremely often. For instance, certain compatibility patches become obsolete and in fact destructive a day or two later. (for example, there's a KSP Interstellar/Real Fuel Compat patch that I think isn't needed anymore, but am uncertain) And if a mistake is made because I did something wrong or didn't see a step or did a step I shouldn't have done, boom, there goes my save. I know I seem like a complainer, and maybe I am compared to the pros here, but I feel like I have a legitimate point of view. This thing needs a modpack installer like they eventually invented for Minecraft.

So I hit the AIES forum thread, and search for the word "remote". Nope, not in the first page. So I go to the last page. Ah, a post mentioning the compatibility patch. But then I see another complaint - apparently the CoM for most parts is set wrong, and there is no fix. Is AIES strictly necessary? I'm unclear on what all these part packs even bring to the table. I have heard that Novapunch is needed because it adds bigger engines which are needed to make a heavy lift vehicle to leave Kerbin. I am uncertain what AIES and KW Rocketry brings to the table. I'll try adding KW back with the fuel tank file folder deleted. And, for that matter, why is B9 aerospace left out? It does offer some slick looking parts, and B9 seems to do a good job at setting the values to work well with FAR...

Ok, so I figured out the capsule lift problem from yesterday (turns out SAS can do the same thing as cheating to change the center of gravity of a capsule). So I decided I needed to launch some comsats (since without life support, I'll need to send some probes). So there's some cool looking AIES antenna. However, you cannot select a target with them, and there is no range listed. I installed the very latest version of remote tech, right off the forum page, and they still don't work. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16656673/aeis%20probes.png Am I doing something wrong, or are these antenna not working? If they don't work, why are they in the tech tree instead of the node "things that don't work"? Is there some unofficial patch buried in the forums somewhere that I was supposed to have installed? I only have the part mods AIES and Novapunch, btw, because another poster on here said that KW rocketry has a lot of duplicate parts.

Uggh. Your mod shouldn't require cheating to model lift correctly for capsules. I don't suppose you could make the capsules apply lift correctly in future versions of FAR...

Anyone have a screenshot of what a "lifting capsule" looks like? I seem to be dying from G-force damage. Do I have to slow down before reentry, or can I somehow create capsule lift? Yes, I have the latest version of FAR installed.

Question : have you made the normal awards for science less, to give your custom experiments more of a purpose? I think that's what is happening, but asking to be certain.

Yep, that was the problem. Thank-you for helping me fix it.

Yes, absolutely certain. I'll let you get on my computer using teamviewer if you do not believe me. I deleted the folders labeled "deadlyreentry, modularfueltanks, realismoverhaul, realsolarsystem, RPL_tweak_pack, stretchy tanks", and then I copied over all folders from the pack labeled "RPL_MiniRealismPack_V18b" I even deleted the folder "squad" from gamedata, and replaced it with a fresh one. I also deleted the savegame, and started a fresh one. No matter what I try, the result is the same. I've followed your excel spreadsheet to the letter. This is exactly why I have been requesting an all in 1 modpack, or as close as you can get to one. These problems are not a new thing, Minecraft modding had the same ones. Yes, people tried lengthy lists of instructions, but there are so many ways you can make a tiny subtle mistake and nothing works.

There's one or two people posting here who have gotten anywhere. And, the lack of auto-tech applying is just extremely irritating, because you have to remember to adjust tech level with every engine you place on every spacecraft you design, and then to adjust it again once you get an upgrade. Also, there are a great many bugs and glitches. One of those bugs is that the Stayputnik Mark 1 still says "not calibrated for these conditions" instead of saying what the correct conditions are. I'm not certain what I am doing wrong here. I deleted every single folder used by the V18b mini mod pack and the bug persists.

Ok, so I built a test rocket that kerbal engineer and mechjeb say have a TWR of 1.2. Upon liftoff, i find out that it actually is producing 1.05 TWR, and I rightclick on the engine, and see that under these conditions it makes 258 kilonewtons instead of the 300 it is rated for. The engine is the L37 if that helps, and I am using the realism mini-pack version 18b. How do I correct for this, other than by trial and error? I take it that sea level thrust is not always the listed number in your mod.

Well, that tells you your mod is broken and currently not playable. If you would like people to use your plugin, it needs to be fixed. His issue is not that hard to track down - you need to instrument your code and look at how much run time it is eating up. Granted, actually fixing the problem might prove to be extremely difficult, but "this mod causes severe performance loss" is not a difficult issue to track down.

With this realistic scaling, TWRs for efficient rocket designs are hugely important. Where can I find out or calculate the optimal initial TWR for a particular rocket stage? I assume that the ISP and the aerodynamics of the rocket both factor in somehow.

So, I asked Nathan in his Real Fuels thread about automatic engine selection based on tree unlocks. He said he had the code written and that it should be debugged and working "by the end of the weekend". I take it with V19 and with automatic fuel/engine unlocks, we might have a playable game on our hands? One issue remaining is that I have noticed that certain engines unlocked right at the start have a minimum tech level of "2". Yet, those engines should not be unlocked because I have not yet upgraded to General Rocketry. Also, have you put any thought into an economy system? You're quite right regarding SRBs, they would only make sense if we actually had to spend Ker-bucks to buy rocket engines. To make it interesting, perhaps the game needs a maximum launch pad mass (your launch pad at KSP would be capable to a maximum weight for a rocket unless you spend money to upgrade the pad) and of course an economy system where rockets cost money. The way I was thinking it might work, perhaps your space program gets an annual budget. Any money not spent at the end of a game year is lost. Thus, you have to be able to afford a given mission within the price of the annual budget, at worst. You would gain budget increases for the first time you do certain things, and every point of science would add to the budget remaining for this year. There would be commercial missions that give you money for this year so you could do a very expensive mission by first "grinding" a couple commercial missions then doing the expensive mission that same fiscal year. Similarly, kerbonauts would have a "fame" stat, and having kerbonauts do specific things would give you immediate budget increases. Also, kerbonauts gain fame with each successful mission. Permanent bases on various planets and moons would give you money for as long as the kerbonauts at those bases are alive (and, of course, the mod ECLSS or TAC must be installed to gain any money...)

Nathan : do you need help fixing the tech tree integration? I noticed the source code is right there in the plugin folder. What the mod needs is a config file that defines which tech tree nodes unlock which engine tech levels, and the highest tech level unlocked should be used by an engine unless a player has adjusted it via the GUI. (I'm thinking that pressing a tech level select button in the GUI in the action group menu in the VAB would set a flag that would tell the engine to remain at the selected tech level). There's no advanced math here, it's just straightforward and simple programming.

Have you considered doing something with the SRBs? Let me get this straight. You could add an SRB to a vehicle. Or, you could add several "liquid boosters", aka a fuel tank + engine. Several liquid rocket motors will equal the thrust on the SRB, and due to the triple or quadruple ISP, will burn for much longer. Per unit of mass, you come out ahead. Per part added to the rocket, you come out ahead. I don't really understand what SRBs are for. They don't have thrust vectoring, so if you add too many, the rocket will fly out of control. I know they are useful in real life because they can sit for years in a rocket motor before being used. All the military missiles use them, etc.

Looked at the V18 tree. One comment/concern : it looks as if the KSP Interstellar "science lab" is available one node before the Science JR? Not only does this not make sense (one is far more advanced), but as I understand if, the KSP interstellar science lab generates science points more or less infinitely. (albeit slowly unless the lab is placed in a high science location such as orbitting jool) Another one : the SRB tree is very expensive, and I don't really understand what SRBs are really for. Modern real life rockets usually don't use them, and the game ones have terrible ISP stats and rapid burnout. Also, no thrust vectoring. I've played other entertaining tech trees that more or less make you start with SRBs to go places, or you could interlink the SRB and the general rocketry trees.

The problem with the current "mission controller extended" is that there is no actual challenge in that you cannot lose if you go broke. This needs to be in the mod : maybe "lose" is the wrong word. You get a certain amount of money per year (the "budget"), and accomplishing missions and gaining science points increases your annual budget. Budgets don't roll over, so if you timewarp, you lose any unspent money at the end of every fiscal year. Landing Kerbonauts places gains you a lot of money - governed by a hidden state called "fame" for each kerbonaut. Losing a kerbonaut is unpopular and you lose money (while the loss is "investigated") If you lack sufficient funds, you may not launch a rocket. You can take commercial contracts, which will give you money for doing a mission, or will increase your budget (because you did a "demonstration flight" and the commercial entity sign a contract)

Perhaps suborbital hops? I smirk whenever I do this, throwing an enormous rocket away just to get a kerbal to the ice caps or badlands, but it works. You don't have to achieve orbit, and need only a fraction of the delta-v.

You could politely ask permission to throw in FAR, Remote Tech 2, Deadly Reentry, and TAC or ECLSS as well. I don't really mind if the versions of those mods got out of date, I'd rather play with a set of mods that are throughly tested in the pack version. That would mean that all balance related mods are in one file - then you could just list everything else as either an optional part pack, an optional utility pack, or an optional gfx improving pack.

Oh, another annoyance : so my rockets were running out of fuel, yet there was still fuel left in the tanks. Weird. I eventually figured out that modular fuels, by default if you just place a tank down, will put the wrong ratio of kerosene : liquid oxygen.

I did try to install that linked plugin, but it's confusing. There's 50 different steps now, and critical steps are missing. Also, if users follow your instructions to the letter, they will crash every 5 minutes because of lack of memory. You never mentioned installing reduced textures. Also, so this tech level thing has to be applied manually to every engine I place? That's absurd. Look at how KSP interstellar unlocks different tech levels for engines based on research nodes that are present - it's right there in the part config files. Also, you have tier 2-3 "minimum" engines unlocked right at the start -> so you aren't done reshuffling, yet? I downloaded the version I found last night.

That chart is in feet per second. Meters/second would be 1/3 of that, or 4k m/s. I guess the chart is wrong, because the wiki article you pulled that from says the minimum delta-V is about 9.8 kps including atmospheric drag.

Ouch. Uh, is needing 10.5k delta V realistic to Earth? How on earth did they get early satellites into orbit...

So once I got this tree installed last night I started playing it. (by the way, you NEED to mention this in the install instructions. The game WILL CRASH on windows systems without reduces textures for KW rocketry AND Novapunch. I do not have any other mods installed that were not on that excel doc, and I used a fresh install of Kerbal) I did the upper atmosphere probe and built a crude airplane and got some early points. I said "wow, this isn't hard at all". The custom experiments plugin needs some work, by the way : it needs to say what conditions you need in order to do the experiment instead of the message "not calibrated for these conditions". I noticed that early on you get tons and tons of stuff, a lot easier than another custom tech tree I tried. I did a suborbital flight, and I said alright, time to put up a communications satellite. And, well : This rocket keeps getting more and more ridiculous as I add more fuel and more engines, and it has yet to reach orbit. I don't actually know how much delta-V I even need, but apparently, 8k is not enough. Fun, but I agree with the poster above : this tree needs to be designed to encourage you to play all aspects of the game. As currently designed, you can completely skip tons of stuff because it is not optimal. The whole solid rocket booster tree, for instance.

Alright, got it to work. The reason why I want a pack is that I can be 100% sure I am playing exactly the pack as intended, and if any errors occur, they are not due to a mistake that I made. Also, it took me about 30 minutes to dig up all those mods and set everything up. Not as bad as I feared, but it was still annoying.