[1.3] [Kopernicus] New Horizons v2.0.1 [2JUN17] - It's Back!

[eddiew]

After that mental image, I shall not be sleeping tonight!

You're welcome

Nothing special, but on-topic, anyone else time their launches for daylight and Sonnah-rise? It's kind of nice to have a thing to aim at...

[Katchau]

I lost my save-game today, because of some nasty bug with KSPI Extended but I really enjoyed the journey through your system.

So here are some screenshots

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The next playthrough already started ^^

[dom700]

Lol, screenshot 8. I made a screenshot of an earthquake event as well

[eddiew]

Unlucky Katchau. Best advice for the future is make a named save at the start of play, something like 'aug19 snapshot' ^^;

Good screens though

The stepped terrain bug can be avoided by not launching missions from the KSC screen (don't just click the launch pad/runway), and making sure to force a scene change after you've timewarped, e.g. by going to the research building and before you launch.

[eddiew]

Hey Ash, ever considered turning Lave's craters into lakes, maybe with some canyons/canals between them, and a touch of green at the edges? Was thinking that it could use something to set it apart and make it not another Dres, and I don't think I've seen liquid on any of the NH planets - and there's not much in stock either. Bit of water/ethane might soften it up a bit and make it a more appealing target.

I've been messing around with the configs myself, but my 1-hour of Kopernicus experience has so far only succeeded in reducing Eli's orbit until it scrapes Lave's atmo at PE, and giving Lave some 60km high mountains. Which I admit are both hilarious outcomes and I may keep them just for shots and gigs. It's actually really fun to have a moon that sweeps in ultra-close. And probably rips ships out of orbit. Might need to fine tune that, tbh ^^;

[MinimumSky5]

I don't think I've seen liquid on any of the NH planets

Tidus has an equatorial ocean, and Serran was meant to (It may well get one in the near future as Ash, if I'm not mistaken, still wants to add a small sea.)

[cantab]

So I may have sussed out Aptur.

I'd already recognised Aptur as being co-orbital with Kerbin, and specifically it's a "quasi-satellite". Wikipedia mentions that quasi-satellites appear to orbit their companion retrograde, although being outside its SOI. A bit of observing Kerbin and Aptur in the Tracking Station confirmed this.

So, I launched into a retrograde Kerbin orbit! Then set up a node to just break Kerbin's SOI, fiddled around for a bit, and bingo. Departing at an arbitrarily chosen time I got just over 600 m/s to leave, although that is departing from a 350 km orbit and it would be somewhat more from a typical LKO. Aptur periapsis is about 7 hours later, projected to take 200 m/s or so to capture.

[Randazzo]

Retrograde

Well, that should save some time in the future.

Pictures!

Serran Outpost Alpha... the sand is quite loose.

After deploying a mining rig to service the outpost, the Valkyr shuttle arrives and refuels. (It didn't bring the rig, only crew and science parts)

Leaving the next evening:

And 3 years later, Jeb and Bob arrive in orbit of Lave, then swing by Eli for giggles.

[VASMIR]

How do you make biome maps?

[Randazzo]

How do you make biome maps?

With the multi-spectral scanner found here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80369

[MinimumSky5]

Randazzo, I have a feeling he meant the Kopernicus file, not ScanSat.

[Sigma88]

How do you make biome maps?

Biomes are probably the easiest to do, depending on what kind of biomes you want, you can set a threshold in the heightmap or colormap and then give a single color to the selected region

[Randazzo]

Randazzo, I have a feeling he meant the Kopernicus file, not ScanSat.

Whoops.

[Tynrael]

Serran Outpost Alpha... the sand is quite loose.

You should always bring a Toroidal Fuel tank and wait half an hour after eating snacks before potential submersion.

I am actually surprised I didn't find an edited image on the internet of a Kerbal inside a Toroidal using it like a live-saver.

[eddiew]

I am actually surprised I didn't find an edited image on the internet of a Kerbal inside a Toroidal using it like a live-saver.

No need to edit - external command chair and offset it downwards. I might have to do this as my next microlander

[MinimumSky5]

No need to edit - external command chair and offset it downwards. I might have to do this as my next microlander

It just needs an Ant engine on the bottom, and you have yourself the kerbal equivalent of a lifeboat for a space station!

[eddiew]

Pretty much, yeah. Problem comes when you want a reaction wheel, battery, and solars too - else you can't actually point it anywhere. I guess the probe core below is technically optional, but it means you have SAS even for non-pilots

I've been using these little doohickeys, which are about as small as I can reasonably get an escape pod based on Round-8s. Arranged the bits to avoid a tall stack of fuel, core, chair, and engines and give a more boxy shape, which handily fits into a half-length MK2 bay ^^

I can't find a way to do without the Oscars - the Round-8s can't be connected to by fuel lines, and fuel flow doesn't work for surface-attached tanks. You could empty them though, if weight was a premium, or maybe use a couple of tiny nosecones.

That said, the

I posted a few weeks ago is still my favourite Round-8 utility vehicle

[KillAshley]

hey guys sorry i haven't been around, been a little unmotivated lately to work on my various projects. I've still been around though, keeping an eye on what people have been saying, so lets get down to the topics been discussed...

firstly eddiew beautiful screens as ever, and also katchau, those shots are stunning, love them! (sorry to hear about your save corrupting )

SO! lets talk planetary oceans! So originally Serran had an ocean yes, unfortunately i took it out when switching to Kopernicus as I had a few issues with matching things perfectly together to get it functioning properly. I could easily implement it back in now ofc, however would that be something people actually want? My current thinking is along the lines that Serran's oceans have dried up, leaving the surface dry, however there still is subterranean water on the planet. It's just I don't really want to add something unnecessary to the mod. So let me know what you think about it all. oh and as for liquid on the surface of Lave....I somehow doubt that such a thin atmosphere would sustain surface liquids at all, so it's something i doubt would come in....but again let me know how you guys feel!

Serran's terrain issues! I am aware of the issues currently with Serran, hopefully its something that i can easily fix when i dig deep into the planet again. Hopefully it just has something to do with the terrain's offset from when i originally had an ocean and shifted the terrain afterwards! I'll have a good look into it when i rework Serran soon.(Don't worry Randazzo, I haven't forgotten!)

Stars! So although recently there hasn't been much mention of them in the thread lately, but I don't want you guys to think the idea has been forgotten. It's something that I have been putting off for quite some time, as although implementing the star itself is relatively simple, there are many other things to consider....such as; orbital allignments (changing all orbits to have a 'ksp-realistic' orbital allignment to take into account for heat/gravity of stars etc.), solar power (some stars such as the blue main sequence and the red giant are super luminous, would this solar curve make solar power too easy? whereas the white dwarf would be so non-luminous it would make solar panels almost useless....balancing can be pretty tricky!), as well as a few other things. Balancing all these gave me a headache and I put it all on the backburner for now as i work on a few other things (like this prject with Sigma88, and also a new overhaul pack to showcase the true power of kopernicus & pqs mods which will get a dev thread soon). I'm mainly mentioning this now as I have had stars on my mind after working with Sigma88, and also Tynrael was asking about them too. So anyway let me know how you feel about the idea of them, what you would like to see, or if you don't mind either way!

Terrain glitching out at launch/KCT bugs! OK so this is just something else i wanted to clear up as I'm not sure if some people missed the discussion about it all. Anyways the terrain issue appears at the KSC screen when launching directly from the launchpad/runway. This happens rarely in normal circumstances, and has something to do with the game not being able to correctly track Kerbin after it's original orbit/rotation changes. The game basically miscalculates the rotation of the planet and the surface implodes on launch. This always happens when allowing substantial time to pass in the KSC view and then immediately launching. The fact that a lot of people have assumed it has something to do with KCT in the past is because with KCT you have to launch from the KSC view after waiting for the ship to be built, this allows time to pass and triggers the bug. A simple way to avoid is always to switch scenes before launching (like going into the tracking station and back out) this allows the game to fix itself. Please make sure not to discuss it in KCT's thread or mention it to magico13 as I'm sure he's sick of hearing about it, instead feel free to whine about it in this thread and I'll pretend to listen . I just want to state this is a kopernicus bug, and a fix for this is pretty complicated, although i have nothing but faith in ThomasP to find a way eventually

anyways guys thanks! I'll get back into it as soon as i get my mojo back!

also big thanks to MinimumSky5 who is only 1 planet away from completing ALL the science defs, as well as the DMagic science defs all by himself! Without him they would never have gotten done lol!

[cantab]

I like Serran how it is, it's like a vast dry lake on the red side. Though I haven't seen its former self.

As for other candidates for oceans:

Modified Dres? Since everyone says it's the most boring planet in stock. If Stock!Laythe can have oceans, surely NH!Dres can too.

Nolas? I'm thinking the cracks could have liquid at the bottom, kept that way by tidal forces. They could present a new challenge to reach, especially if Nolas remains airless.

Entirely new body, of course.

[MinimumSky5]

I personally don't agree with oceans on Dres or Nolas, because Dres is meant to be a bit of a boring, lonely space potato. Nolas, from what I can gather, is a Europa analog, so it's surface should be completely dry. I also will get very annoyed at Ash for putting an ocean on an airless world, and I'm sure he wouldn't like it either! The Joolian system is interesting enough as it is, there really is no reason to change it.

Also, Ash, I'm glad we agree on Serran, it would bit of a PITA to change those Defs!

[Whovian]

well. this is intriguing

player.log located here

I'm no expert in reading logs... but that last line is... impossible? I've been checking my system activity, and memory usage never spikes over 8 gb

Okay, I've finally gotten around to a theory. Sorry for taking so long; my life got extremely crazy and I haven't had much free time.

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
  at ActiveTextureManagement.TextureConverter.TGAToTexture (ActiveTextureManagement.TexInfo Texture, Boolean mipmaps) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at ActiveTextureManagement.TextureConverter.GetReadable (ActiveTextureManagement.TexInfo Texture, Boolean mipmaps) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at ActiveTextureManagement.CacheController.RebuildCache (ActiveTextureManagement.TexInfo Texture, Boolean compress, Boolean mipmaps, System.String hashString) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at ActiveTextureManagement.CacheController.FetchCacheTexture (ActiveTextureManagement.TexInfo Texture, Boolean compress, Boolean mipmaps) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at ActiveTextureManagement.DatabaseLoaderTexture_ATM.UpdateTexture (ActiveTextureManagement.TexInfo texture) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at ActiveTextureManagement.DatabaseLoaderTexture_ATM+<Load>d__4.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine_Auto(IEnumerator)
UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour:StartCoroutine(IEnumerator)
	:MoveNext()

I'm suspecting this is related to your problem; it's consistent with ATM's occasionally slightly breaking stuff. If this were the case, my limited knowledge of ATM tells me that you'd probably run into crashes when loading a particular texture (keep in mind that "texture" can mean anything from a skin to an ore distribution). If you manage to figure out what texture it is, I think you can force ATM to keep the original tga(?) loaded.

If the problem isn't that, I've absolutely no clue.

(Also holy **** that's a ton of mods. As in I deliberately stopped installing my mods at about half of what you have because KSP was taking so long to start up.)

[Olympic1]

It is probably another mod as NH doesn't use .tga's, the same for stock textures.

[eddiew]

Re; oceans, personally I think they add a lot of charm to a planet. For Serran, maybe the terrain could be levelled so's to provide only small, widely spaced salt-lakes? The white could be science deffed as fish bones xD

For Lave (and I mean this to be constructive rather than critical ) my feeling is that there's not a very good reason to visit it. It's a medium sized rocky body with a small moon; but Laythe is more or less the same, and is more accessible, having the denser oxygenated atmosphere, and being faster to get to. Which started me wondering what could be changed about Lave that would make it worth the travel time, and why would you go there rather than adding another 200m/s and head for Jool/Duna/Ike/Dres/etc?

(I hoped to make a config patch and post screenshots of the results for illustration, but so far Kopernicus has defeated me with its lack of documentation. Can't for love nor money get an ocean to appear so I'll just have to describe it )

What Lave has from the outset is an orbit not a gazillion miles away from Kerbin, which we can assume to be in the middle of the goldilocks zone. Indeed, Lave, Laythe and Serran are the only bodies other than Kerbin to have any reasonable shot at habitability - which I think a lot of players, myself included, find to be a fun and exciting concept. Oxygen atmospheres and hints of bio-activity make for tempting targets, as evidenced by Joolian-Laythe being the preferred colony for basically everyone, despite the travel difficulties involved and Duna being vastly easier in every way.

Being purple, Lave makes me think of Earth's archean era, wherein the primary life-form was magnificently purple bacteria. The concept of Lave as a primordial soup then led on to;

- the bacteria would need some moisture going on, hence the crater seas suggested previously

- being rather cooler than Kerbin, Lave would benefit from some tidal heating, which suggested that Eli could come inwards to maybe a quarter of it's current orbit *

- alternatively it could have a thicker atmosphere, with some science defs suggesting 10-20% carbon-dioxide and a lot of water vapour, giving it enough of a greenhouse to hold onto the heat it gets from the sun

- in fact, the tidal heating option complements this, since it would make Lave regularly burp volcanic gasses, which would help replenish it's atmosphere with CO2 **

Few other things I thought might help Lave come to the fore a little;

- polar ice caps. Maybe not duna-big, but significant larger than Kerbin's. As it stands, without EVE (which I don't have the memory space for), it looks like a vacuum body from space.

- rings, perhaps on the outside of a reduced Eli orbit

- a second moon, possibly co-orbital with Eli, either of similar mass and 180 degrees around, or very small and in a lagrange point

- increased mountain height; again following up on the tidal effects of a closer moon, I'd expect greater continental plate movement and thus some bigger ridges going on

- a habit of spawning asteroids (if this is even possible with Kopernicus. Maybe using Dres as the template?)

Obviously all just my 2p If it doesn't fit your concept that's totally fine - maybe you see Lave as a dry, cold, desert planet, with hardy purple lichens. I'm just brainfarting ideas on how to make it feel less of a lonely space

^^;

* I tried it around 2200km and it looks badass, actually, having a moon so dominant in the sky. It may also make it very easy to use for gravity slingshots, which is always fun!

** I personally wouldn't feel bad about bending the rules and having the purple archean bacteria as oxygen factories. The atmo described would probably be toxic to kerbals, but a good set of filters and scrubbers would allow them to extract oxygen for their sealed habitats.

[dom700]

eddiew, about the atmosphere, you are on to a problem I have had for quite some time now.

Atmospheres right now have only 2 influences, they add drag/heat and some have oxygen. I just wish there would be a way for more diverse atmospheres. Like your CO2 atmosphere, I would like to use CO2 scrubbers there to generate oxygen (obviously not for engines, but at least for life support). Other atmospheres would contain xenon to extract, others maybe water. Right now it feels quite dull

About the New Horizon system:

I actually like the "backstory" of Serran, which explains the lack of ocean, and I am fine with that (not like any of us would be sending a submarine to an ocean world anyway). Lave on the other hand I don't really know what to think, but basically such a vast system should also have space for "boring" worlds, not that I consider it boring.

[MinimumSky5]

I'm fine with Lave staying as it is, as having three out of a possible four habitable planets actually habitable seems fine to me, besides (WARNING: SPOILERS) Lave has high levels of chlorine and perchlorates in its soil, which isn't very conductive to life. Our solar system has one planet that could have been habitable, but never was (Venus), one planet that is possibly life bearing, but has lost its oceans (Mars) and one planet that is perfect for life in every way (Its name escapes me at the moment!).