gleedadswell

I've started playing with nuclear engines (the LV-N and similar in mods). I've noticed that at the moment LV-N and real fuels don't get along very well. In standard KSP you attach an LV-N to a standard (big!) tank and get very good delta-v because of the high Isp. But if you use real fuels then the tank is full of liquid H2 (which is realistic) with a very low density. The result is that the fuel mass/tank mass ratio is only a bit better than 1. For example, a NovaPunch HH-375-C tank full of LiquidH2 has a dry mass of 4.9662 t and a full mass of only 11.0649 t. So the high Isp doesn't translate into high delta-v because the empty tanks are too heavy. The result is that, as far as I can tell, you can never get a better delta-v with an LV-N than you can with an efficient H2/LOX engine and the same number of tanks if you are using real fuels. In the real NERVA project the NERVA stage was projected to have an empty mass (engine and tanks) of about 34 tonnes and a full mass of 178 tonnes. I calculate its delta-v at an impressive 13 000 m/s. Even with a 20 tonne payload it would have a delta-v of 10 000 m/s. Now for KSP this would have to be scaled for game balance because of the smaller solar system. But still, to have the LV-N beat chemical rockets using liquid H2 you need fuel tanks with much lower empty mass. I'm going to make them for myself by editing .cfg files. But a worthwhile addition to some mod (maybe real fuels, since it only comes up with liquidH2 fueling the LV-N) would be a large, thin-walled tank (low impact tolerance, low mass) intended for nuclear engines. It's not an issue in regular KSP because you use a higher density fuel.

I'm really enjoying this mod in career mode. One comment on the tech tree: it probably makes sense to get some radiators before Advanced Electrics (perhaps the first ones should be in Electrics with the first photoelectrics). It's pretty hard to do anything remote controlled (even Comm Sats if you are using remote tech) without radiators, and pretty much impossible to send a probe any distance without them.

Ah, ha! Got it! I was taking the PlanetFactory directory and dropping that into GameData (because that is more like a lot of other mods where the zip contains a GameData directory and you copy what is in it into your own GameData directory). But I should have been dropping the PluginData directory from the mod zipfile into GameData. So for clarity, those others of you who have had this problem, the correct directory structure is: KSP_Home/GameData/PluginData/PlanetFactory/ (contains a bunch of files) KSP_Home/GameData/PlanetFactory.dll

The above was a response to the issue, reported by plinyvic, me and several others, with Serious engulfing Kerbin and all Planet Factory planets using skins of stock planets. Dropping everything in gamedata doesn't fix it. So far I have tried: everything (PlanetFactory directory and .dll) in GameData: results in problem reported above. directory in PluginData, .dll in Plugins: same problem directory in GameData, .dll in Plugins: same problem directory in GameData, .dll in PluginData: no planets other than stock - mod not installed at all everything (directory and .dll) in PluginData: no planets other than stock I messed around with Plugins and PluginData because in the .zip of the mod most of the files are inside a directory called PluginData. So, having tried all of the above I'm at a loss. How do I get this thing to work? I tried the above in a clean directory with just the stock game and this mod, so this isn't a problem of conflicting mods.

Confirmed. The configuration seems to have some sort of confusion between Kerbin and Serious. In either map view for an active spacecraft in Kerbin's SOI or in tracking center focused on any spacecraft in Kerbin SOI if I double click anywhere (except on Kerbin or on a spacecraft) it zooms out from Kerbin so I see a star and it tells me the focus is on Serious. So Serious seems to be at the same location as Kerbin at the moment.

Wonder whether this is connected: I now have some science, all from on and around Kerbin. The items are there in the persistent.sfs file. But in the science archives if I click Kerbin no experiments show up as done. The reason I wonder whether it is connected is that since Kerbin is showing up in the tracking center as a star it strikes me that it could be somehow misidentified in the configuration? Oh, also, none of the PlanetFactory planets show up in the science archives. Is this normal?

There's no Plugins directory inside the PlanetFactory directory. So I've got PlanetFactory.dll just in the GameData folder. Update: tried putting the dll into a Plugins directory inside the PlanetFactory folder. This didn't change anything.

Hi folks, Just installed this. Looking forward to playing with it. Looking around in the tracking center couple of things don't look quite right: 1. I don't see Serious. Where should it be, in case I'm just not looking in the right direction, or far enough away. 2. When I zoom out from Kerbin in the tracking center it looks like a star. Could this be connected with the apparent lack of Serious? 3. Sentar looks just like Jool. I am using the active texture management mod, so it could be because of that. I've put the PlanetFactory folder in GameData (I tried it in PluginData but got no new planets that way). The PlanetFactory.dll is also in the GameData folder. Have I done that wrong? Cheers!

I have this problem as well, but not with anything as complicated as the second design. If I just attach the float node to an engine and then put the fuselages on then a lot of the time (it is not consistent) my rocket falls apart. I am using KJR and it is at the stage that the "KJR stabilizing physics load" message appears that the rocket falls apart. It doesn't seem to matter whether autostruts are on or off. It also doesn't seem to matter whether I've manually installed struts from the adapter to the engine. It does seem to matter how I set the height and top width of the fuselage, since fiddling with those usually fixes the problem. But I haven't found any systematic way to set the height and top width so that things work. Sometimes "burying" the top of the fuselage deep inside the fuel tank works and other times it doesn't. Is there a secret? At the moment I've got a rocket that I can't get to hold together even after fiddling for over 20 minutes! ------------------------ Later edit: Hmm...it may have to do with what kind of engine it is. Switched from an AIES engine (which gave problems) to a Novapunch engine and the problem disappeared. I will test further... With the AIES engine it appears that the fairing somehow makes the engine break off of the fuel tank above it.

Are these stages connected with a procedural interstage fairing? As much as I love the procedural fairings I have to admit that sometimes it is difficult to get the interstage fairing to correctly hold what is above it. It seems to be a matter of getting the right radius of the top of the fairing, but I haven't figured out how to tell I've got the right radius except to go to the launchpad and see if the thing falls apart.

And, as awesome as MedievalNerd is, he can't build his tech tree taking every other mod a player might conceivably play with into account. But Interstellar is one of the "recommended" mods to go with this one, so hopefully the waste heat issue will be dealt with eventually. I mostly posted my observation to help anyone else who might be having the same problem. Cheers!

No, that's not what I mean, though that is an awesome little web app! And it partly answers my question, since it gives the date of the launch window, which is better than eyeballing the phase angle on the screen (but does the "add body" feature have enough flexibility to do RSS instead of the stock Kerbal system?). But, like I said, I know how to do the calculations by hand (I've got a fairly large physics background). What I'm finding difficult is, for example, once you know that you want to do a burn out of Kerbin at a particular ejection angle there is then some difficulty in actually executing it since there is not much info. available in game on things like where your spacecraft is in relation to the direction Kerbin is going in its orbit. My problem is not calculational, which I'm pretty good at. My problem is with executing what I've calculated. It's like the reason most physicists are not overly good pool players, even though pool is just applied physics. Later edit: no that web app doesn't appear to be able to do the RSS. In particular, it doesn't appear to have a way for you to edit the mass of the sun, which would be the first requirement to be able to use it for RSS. But in any case, the calculations aren't my problem, though using that app would have been much faster than the pen-and-paper methods I'm doing now.

Hey all, I've noticed a minor incompatibility. If you are using the Interstellar mod then Waste Heat is added. Early in the tech tree you have solar panels (which generate waste heat) but you have no parts that are able to "dump" waste heat. It makes interplanetary missions nearly impossible since when you go to time warp the waste heat builds up and then when it reaches critical levels your solar panels retract and you have a dead probe (time to do a save file edit...). For now I've gone into WarpPluginSettings.cfg and set ThermalMechanicsDisabled = True Which fixes the problem for now. Once I have thermal radiators I'll turn the thermal mechanics back on. So probably at least some of the thermal radiators in the Interstellar mod need to be made available in early tech nodes. Cheers!

So, how do you folks line up interplanetary trips? The online "interactive illustrated interplanetary calculator" does the stock KSP solar system, not the RSS. I can calculate the phase angle to launch at, the delta v of the ejection from Earth SOI and the angle from Earth prograde to do the burn (yup, I'm a physics geek...). But then what? Use a protractor slapped onto the screen to measure the angles? Seems a bit primitive... Or do you folks go on to calculate *when* the right phase angle will occur and what longitude you need to be over when starting the burn using epochs and all that good stuff?

What is the nature of these issues? I haven't noticed anything terribly wrong except that if I use a lot of clamps (like, 8) I get a terrible lag when I launch, but the lag eventually resolves itself. But I get the same sort of lag if I have a lot of radial decouplers that all have to stage at the same time, such as when I'm dropping a bunch of small SRBs.

Hooray! You can't take the sky from me... (yeah, like that's an original joke on this thread...) Yes, I grabbed this mod very shortly after 0.23 came out and didn't realize there was a new version to fix things that 0.23 broke. Nice to have a sky!

Hey folks, I know that a black sky in daytime is a fairly normal problem with this mod. But many of you posting pictures have a working sky. Is there something I can do to get my sky working? Cheers!

Procedural interstage fairings are officially awesome! It took a few tries to get them working, but now I think I'll deliberately design my rockets with size mismatches between stages so I'm forced to use fairings instead of ordinary decouplers. ;-)

OK, I'm not using FftS (out of memory crashes...). But I'll have a look at them at some point. I'm happy to just go with my slight modifications to the ignitor .cfg files in KW and AIES. It still adds the element of limited ignitions, and sometimes needing to do something (like having some acceleration via other, easier igniting, engines) to stabilize fuel flow. So I'm not terribly concerned over the diversity of what ignitor resources are used by different engines.

OK, and now I've found the AIES engines that use LiquidFuel+Oxidizer to ignite and they won't ignite either. So I've edited IgnitorAIES.cfg in the same way to get them to work.

Hmm...nope, that wasn't the problem after all. I deleted all of the .cfg files from the root EngineIgnitor folder (e.g. IgnitorAIES.cfg, IgnitorKW.cfg, etc.). But that made it just like I didn't have EngineIgnitor installed at all as far as I could tell - no ignition resources displayed in the right click menu for engines, no ignition needs listed in red when I hover over the engine in the VAB, no ignition info listed in the engine information in the VAB, seem to be able to ignite and shutdown until the cows come home. So I'm not sure why the Realism Overhaul instructions say to delete those files. Am I misunderstanding the instruction? Was I supposed to delete a different set of files? Anyway, I restored those .cfg files to their originals. This once again resulted in the Wildcat-V (sorry, I said Maverick-V before but it isn't the problem) not being able to ignite (fuel flow lists as Very Stable, but even straight off the launch pad it won't ignite). So I redid my edit to IgnitorKW.cfg to switch the Wildcat-V's ignition resource over to hypergolic fluid and now it ignites.

So one mod I'm using came with ModuleManager_1_5_6, another came with 1_5_5 and another came with 1_5. Do I need all three or does 1_5_6 supercede the others?

OK, I'm using proc fairings and have played with fairings for the payload at the top of the rocket (cool!). But I haven't tried the interstage fairings yet. I'll check them out. Thanks!

Also, there would be cases (e.g. lander going to a place with an atmosphere) where you might want some things under the capsule which would be protected by a heat shield.

Ah, that clarifies it. Yes, I'm using the Realism Overhaul. But looking back at it I think I see the problem. I had neglected to delete the .cfg from the root EngineIgnitor folder. I'll try that and see if it fixes the problem. I totally understand why there isn't a single package we can download to get all of the mod configurations working in one go, but I also understand the grousing some people do about it on these forums. But if you're going to choose your own mods I guess reading the instructions carefully is part of the cost. ;-)