The New Resource drill

[Joonatan1998]

I don't understand what is the point of having different amounts of resources at different places.

The only thing that matters is if there are any resources at all, if there are you can just timewarp.

And in stock time doesn't really matter at all.

I agree with people saying that the resource seems too common.

(resource slider in the options would probably be the best solution?)

[Wahgineer]

This is basically Karbonite, so its concentration based. Concentration decreases over time, but doesn't completely disappear. Also: Roverdude, will we be getting engines that can run on protofuel (albeit not very efficiently)? Will the atmospheric engines from Karbonite be added, too?

[DuoDex]

Speaking of, how about hoses that could be dragged or dropped while in EVA into a liquid medium for collecting and processing?

Gib please.

This would be infinitely better then drills in water. It could just be a retexture of the drill part with a tube instead of a drill.

[RoverDude]

I'm hoping the code and options look like Regolith. That'll make the transition from mod to stock framework much easier.

Well, I hear the same guy is writing it

I don't understand what is the point of having different amounts of resources at different places.

The only thing that matters is if there are any resources at all, if there are you can just timewarp.

And in stock time doesn't really matter at all.

I agree with people saying that the resource seems too common.

(resource slider in the options would probably be the best solution?)

Actually (and speaking purely from a more general standpoint, not in relation to stock as that's still being sorted) it does matter. There's a point where the numbers are so low, it just is not worth it. Case in point would be Karbonite where you could have some pretty dismal spots.

Granted, at the end of the day, you could leave a ship landed with an array of gigantors and let it sit for 100 years to get enough fuel to get to orbit. But odds are you're going to be looking for something at least in the range of 'acceptable'. Especially if you have other constraints like contract expirations, life support, a burning desire to get that sweet sweet science back to Kerbin, or rep loss because you're time warping for aforementioned 100 years. Not to mention resource generation costs themselves - solar is not free, it represents payload mass, and if you have to carry over a ton of solar panels vs. being able to live off of the land, this has an impact.

And as noted - regardless of where stock lands (depletable, not depletable, everywhere, almost nowhere, etc.) stuff will be open for configuration. Because odds are good that if you feel strongly about how resources should work in stock, there's someone next to you with precisely the opposite opinion (speaking from experience, since all of these discussions came up when Karbonite launched).

And the best bit is that both of you are right.

[tater]

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that its just a small drill.... Could be a huge drill for all we know...

I realize this is for stock, and I'll use some mod, or only use such a drill in the context of a large base, but a front-loader makes more sense than a drill.

For the Moon, regolith is ~42% Oxygen by weight. Hydrogen is only a meaningful component at the poles (it's only like 50 ppm elsewhere). If a drill is only several cm across, it's not mining any meaningful amounts of regolith.

If hydrogen is a target resource, then it should likely be polar regions exclusively on airless bodies (obviously different on asteroids/comets).

[billbobjebkirk]

Wow, I'm going to miss playing KSP where Delta V actually mattered and not being able to just slap a tiny drill onto my craft and infinitely refuel...

I'm sure Robert Zubrin misses the days when Mars Direct didn't exist and any plans to get to Mars required huge behemoths that had to bring all of their return fuel to Mars.

[tater]

I'm sure Robert Zubrin misses the days when Mars Direct didn't exist and any plans to get to Mars required huge behemoths that had to bring all of their return fuel to Mars.

Well, assuming it might take a year to fill a single tank of an ascent stage on a world with an atmosphere, that would be fine to the extent it's reasonable. If a KSP craft lands with a tiny drill and refills the tank in anything short of… a very long time… the regex is entirely correct. Note that most extraction methods talked about use a lot of energy. If you have vast amounts of electricity, then perhaps ion engines are in order, saving the need for the ISRU in the first place (obviously not for landers).

The time to mine/extract is sort of critical to even somewhat believable ISRU in small packages.

[RoverDude]

..you guys did see the pic from last week showing the ISRU module right?

I would not be using the word 'tiny'

[basic.syntax]

Thanks RoverDude, for your detailed replies

Edit: last week's pic and reddit explanation.

Edited February 28, 2015 by basic.syntax

[tater]

..you guys did see the pic from last week showing the ISRU module right?

I would not be using the word 'tiny'

Is this the one?

2.5 m parts?

[basic.syntax]

This would be infinitely better then drills in water. It could just be a retexture of the drill part with a tube instead of a drill.

"if deployed over water, use mode 2" kind of idea. That would be nice. I don't mind an occasional lol - handwave, when I see something illogical, if the item provides expected gameplay, and in the case of a 'universal' drill, saves me from carrying two dedicated drills.

[magnemoe]

Is this the one?

http://i.imgur.com/neKPtkQ.png

2.5 m parts?

Yes, length is 3 times the kethane converter, or the size of an karbonite to fuel and an karbonite to monoprop converter together 2+2.5 ton and 3 pancake tanks length.

[Vorg]

While it would be nice to have more then one drill option like Karbonite has, you can always put 2 or more drills on in symmetry mode to get a balanced ship and faster collection.

[Scoundrel]

I'm torn. I really like the parts, they're very well done. My issue with these resource gathering systems is the reliance on radial parts that have silly limits. If the drills weren't some weird telescoping thing but a drum-fed turntable that simply connected pipe, then you could solve a few problems:

1. A player could have a spare drum of pipes on the other side to balance the radial mounting of the drill/turntable. This, for me, solves something of a bit of a pet peeve since finding something to counterbalance a radial drill usually ends up being something I didn't need or want to bring along.

2. A player won't have to worry about carefully designing a ship and spending hours carefully maneuvering to arrive at their destination... only to discover that their drill won't reach once they've actually landed; there wouldn't be a height limit to the drill so it would never really be an issue. Just loop the connection animation and you'd end up with a pipe that is as long as it needs to be. Sidenote: it would also allow us to set up drilling platforms on oceans for whatever reason, but I prefer DuoDex's idea of a "hose mode." And I'm totally not thinking of making Beer a resource.

3. It allows for an in-line variant that can be placed somewhere convenient, like, say, cargo bays if it was designed right.

Also, the side benefit with having spare drums with pipe in them is that rather than focus on resource concentration (which has been pointed out to be kinda pointless in a game where you can time-warp, though RoverDude made decent counters to that point), you can have the resource map display it as depth, so players will seek out the easily accessible spots for their ships, but can go for the deep wells (if required) with their permanent bases. And, if resource depletion is a thing that the devs want for one reason or another, simply have the resource depth slowly change as protofuel is extracted so that the player has to drill deeper to continue to get it. Thus there can be missions to bring spare pipe to bases just so they can continue to generate fuel (oh noes! base maintenance!), and we can even go so far as to require an Engineer to "reload" the pipe drums.

It's not completely realistic, but it solves some issues without creating new ones, adds but a tiny bit of complexity to base-building, and has the potential for some interesting contracts.

[basic.syntax]

finding something to counterbalance a radial drill usually ends up being something I didn't need or want to bring along.

We'll have to wait and see, on this part of the question

Oh... I already thought of how to counterbalance it (link to post)

[Scoundrel]

We'll have to wait and see, on this part of the question

Lol fair enough. I'll reserve final judgement for when the goodies are finally revealed.

[Bloody_looser]

And why not just slap another drill on the other side? For harder drilling, you know.

Been wondering if drills can be used as landing gear

[SlinkyBlue]

Here's hoping that you need satellite scanner systems to make low-resolution images of resource nodes, and then another high-resolution accurate sample from the soil.

[helaeon]

Here's hoping that you need satellite scanner systems to make low-resolution images of resource nodes, and then another high-resolution accurate sample from the soil.

I think that may be somewhat likely considering the recent changes to Karbonite & Regolith. Though, they didn't come along without some backlash so who knows.

[AbhChallenger]

Wow, I'm going to miss playing KSP where Delta V actually mattered and not being able to just slap a tiny drill onto my craft and infinitely refuel...

It isn't easy mode fuel. Even if it is easier to use than other resource mods it still requires planning to do right. It just encourages a different style of play for players than "MOAR BOOSTERS MOAR FUELZ!!11"

[Tripzter]

As much as i like details i dont think the gears on the drill head are really needed. The game is laggy as it is (Running gtx980).

[Hcube]

Not sure if you are aware of this but observe closely and you'll see that the gears do not move in any way, and so they shouldn't be reducing preformance much...

Gtx 980 and lagging ? Really ? I have a crappy 65$ card and the games runs "smoothly" between 30 and 40 fps ( good enough for me) as long as the size of my ships is "within the current bounds of sanity" (tech tree ref btw )

[ShawnPhillips]

As much as i like details I don't think the gears on the drill head are really needed. The game is laggy as it is (Running gtx980).

GTX980 lagging? What? I have a GTX780Ti pushing a 4k display and I get a solid smooth framerate, even with 200 part crafts.

[Red Iron Crown]

Lag is not caused by GPU load in KSP, generally speaking. It's CPU-bound, with lag scaling with part count.

[SlinkyBlue]

Did you put a gtx980 in a 10 year old computer?

I have gtx 550ti, Intel q9550 and 4 gb of ram. It's about 8 years old. Runs ksp well under most circumstances.