Lightwarrior

Simple question, can parts that are already in space be upgraded after upgrade node was unlocked? I am sure this was asked/answered before, but cannot find an answer in this huge thread. Also it would be fun to have "disable safety" switch for reactors, with new thermal mechanics it can be very usefull. p.s. ThF4 and UF4 containers are not tweakable in VAB. Is this intended? I wanted few empty containers to be able to remove Actinides from the reactor and there seem to be no way to get them...

Also tried to use stock intakes and got same result. No matter how much intakes i use one engine will flameout forcing me to shut down them all to avoid loss of control. By this moment i still have lots of intake air/intake atm.

I think it will be fine, most of ingame time is spent at high timewarps, and considering those fusion reactor changes a lot of people will do this on non-focused ships... BTW tritium in fusion reactor is not decaying to He-3, but if i transfer it from reactor to external tank it does. Also fusion reactor cannot use fuel from external tank, only internal storage. Is this intended behavior?

Tritium breeding does not work. Trying to start it does nothing. Lithium and D/T tanks are attached directly to reactor...

Simpler is better. It is goog enough now and no changes are needed. I dont really know how it is made IRL, but i think that there are some numbers how much food/water/oxygen is required daily, and than all planing is done based on how much "daily norms" will be needed for the mission. Because mistakes here have very bad consequences, and the simplier system is the smaller probability to make mistake is.

I just made full copy of KSP folder, same save, same craft etc. //add Experimented with it a bit more and noticed that timewarp rate changes really slow here. ~2 game days passes before it can be changed from 100.000x to 1x. May be this solves those resource management problems...

Decided to test performance. Copied KSP to my old PC (Phenom2 x4 3.2Ghz, 8gb DDR2, GF9600GT), loaded large enough craft (~350part), and... it works almost the same as stock game. ~10FPS. But there is one interesting thing i noticed - those problems with EC/MJ and fusion reactors shuting down at high warp are... gone. No problems at all. EC/MJ stays full even at 100.000x and fusion reactors continue to work just fine. Seems strange that bad performance fixed something...

2.5m reactor needs 1.2 fuel, tanks have only 0.4, and 0.4 free space. So you will need 3 tanks of each type to swap fuel in 2.5m reactor.

Seems like you do not have enough new fuel or free space for old fuel.

Actually you can take stock Aeris 3A, replace fuel tanks with reactor + inline radiator, replace engine and it will fly. Generator is not really needed, but can be added too. And this is good example for newbies IMO.

Ok, i will not argue here. But may be smaller part can be made to service those smaller reactors? Currently the easiest way is to make changable reactors on docking ports and just replace them when needed. But it does not seem right...

So if i understand correctly now there is only one option to get rid of actinides - refinery. And it will reprocess them only directly from (working) reactor. It sounds wrong to me and because of it refuling small reactors is impractical. Its way, way easier to replace reactor itself (or even whole reactor-engine assembly). May be there should be another EVA option to fully replace fuel, which will also remove actinides to external container, which can be reprocessed later, or just thrown away? As i understand removing whole fuel assembly and installing new one is the only way to "refuel" reactor IRL, which will also remove all waste from the reactor. p.s good job with those wiki, finaly we can know how things really should work not from those "science experiments" on the launchpad

Looks like someone simply want "i win" button. ThermalTurbojet is very powerfull already, but yes, it is a bit hard to use. And it is good. BTW upgraded fission reactor with ThF4 fuel gives 11KN thrust in liquid fuel mode, and 3000isp. 30KN and 2000isp in LFO mode. It is not as good as with fusion reactor, but still way better than anything stock. Those small plane i talked about above has ~3000dV using single T200 fuel tank.

Yes, and my mistake here was that i thought only about EC not going to zero (because it can cause some problems too) and it worked. I never actually tried to run fusion reactors at high warp because fitting 0,3T tiny reactor realy is not a problem.

This is those problem with EC at high timewarp which was discussed above. It seems to happen only when some equipment on ship consumes more EC than is generated by something other than MJ->EC conversion. For me workaround is to place some stock RTG-s and minimize power usage during timewarp... or just add 0.625m fission reactor...

This is good example of how new technology may be worse than old one before solutions based on it are properly developed, tested, and improved based on test results. Such things regularly happen IRL, and this is what i love this mod for. Without reactor upgrade i would prefer stock turbojets as it is way faster and more practical. On kerbin of course, not on eve. But after reactor upgrade this combination (1.25 fission reactor + thermal turbojet) becomes not only usefull and practical, but very powerfull. This is what i ended up doing today with those small fission reactor powered test plane:

Wait, unupgraded fission reactor? Have you tried to swap fuel to ThF4?

BTW may be we can have smaller UF4/ThF4 tanks? May be 1/4 or even 1/10 of current size. For now its easier to replace reactor (or carry 2 of them instead of 1 reactor + fuel tank) then to refuel it if you use 0.625 or 1.25 reactor...

Strange, they fly quite well. I just bult "5-minute test craft" and it got to 90km orbit easily and with ~50% fuel left. The ascend was so easy that i think bigger fuel tank and science instruments can be added if needed. And i dont use FAR.

As i said generator gets "maximum power" value based on reactor it is attached to. And attaching additional reactors will not change this, you will only get more thermal power (which cannot be used by generator above those maximum power). So yes, it is usually better to use one generator per reactor, if you want to use all reactors simultaneously. But if you want, for example, backup power to restart fusion reactors in flight you can place single 0.625 fission reactor anywhere on tha ship, and you do not need to add generator to it, those attached to fusion reactors will work. Another thing is... you can attach 1.25 generator to 1.25 AM reactor and it will get insane maximum power. And then you can use as much other reactors as you want until you exceed those maximum power. You dont even need AM. But IMO it is almost cheating...

When generator is attached to single reactor it will get maximum power based on reactor, then you can have as many reactors as you want, and can place them anywhere you want, they will produce ThermalPower which will be used by generator. I am not sure that it is intended behavior, but this is how it works now. For example you can use fusion reactor+generator, and then use fission reactor on decoupler (without generator) to jumpstart it, and this will work.

BTW why will you need plane to scout mun? You can just make rocket with thermal turbojet and it will start from kerbin without any problems. Wings + all other plane parts are just additional weight and parts. And with those beamed power... there are some complications. At least when ship with transmitters will go to the other side of the mun you will have no power. I tried it myself and came to conclusion that simple rocket with 1.25 fusion reactor, generator, thermal turbojet, single intake and T400 or even T200 fuel tank will be better.

Omega fusion reactor... or antimatter reactors, they will give you insane thrust/TWR but they require antimatter obviously. Also thermal rocket and turbojet in liquid/LFO mode have approximately 1/2 of thrust at sea level on kerbin because of atmosphere. You only need some Megajoules to start, and yes, you will need generator. But fission reactor may be needed only to start, then you can leave it behind. For example i use only fusion reactors on lander, and use power from ship it is docked to during transfer to start process. It only works in career mode, and you get upgrades from science tree nodes there, you do not need science lab for this.

You also can use those radial attachment point to mount things on top of refinery.

Just build simple ship consisting of: 1. 3.75M fission reactor 2. 3.75M generator 3. Some radiators to cool all this. 4. Science lab 5. Antimatter containment device 6. Docking port to be able to collect those antimatter later. 7. Probably wheels or some other means to move this away from the launchpad. Lab will have option to produce antimatter. It will be slow, but if you leave few such "ships" there for some time they will generate some antimatter (~8k for me) before reactor will run out of fuel. This is slower, of course, than collector in Jool orbit, but it is much easier to set up and to retrieve those antimatter later.