Kerbodyne Plus Development Thread

[Bonus Eventus]

This is the development thread for Kerbodyne Plus. Grab the latest Dev build here.

 

About

Summary

Kerbodyne Plus is a parts pack for Kerbal Space Program. It gives players the parts required for building very large interplanetary ships and stations, making for a more enriching end-game experience.

Pics

 

 

Project Goals

• Provide optimized parts for large construction
• Improve end-game play
• Provide beautifully designed parts
• Keep designs grounded in reality (or at worst near-future)
• Remain mod agnostic (Kerbodyne Plus does not support or hinder other mods)

 

Edited April 27, 2016 by Bonus Eventus
updated info

[Tyren]

That looks pretty finished already, testing needed? Good work anyway

- - - Updated - - -

If you want put up a prerelease with licensing, its hard to suggest something for somewhat i havent took on a spin, yet

Edited June 11, 2015 by Tyren
unplanned disassembly of orthography, again

[_Augustus_]

Cool!

[Bonus Eventus]

@Tyren: Yeah that's probably what I'll do. I'm working on a couple of new structural parts as well as a very large animated docking port. I think I'll finish those first.

@_Augustus_: Glad you think so!

[Mekan1k]

This is impressive! Someone should make some cool station with that.

[Domhnall]

I like this pack, it has a lot of cool parts. I have to say though the plasma thruster was underwhelming. It has the mass of 30 ion thrusters but produces less thrust If I'm strapping a 6t engine onto my doom station the TWR better justify it.

But yeah, it's a great start and looking forward to seeing more of it.

[Bonus Eventus]

I like this pack, it has a lot of cool parts. I have to say though the plasma thruster was underwhelming. It has the mass of 30 ion thrusters but produces less thrust If I'm strapping a 6t engine onto my doom station the TWR better justify it.

But yeah, it's a great start and looking forward to seeing more of it.

Thanks you for the kind words and thoughtful feedback. You make a good point about the TWR. If we were to simply scale up the stock dawn engine by a factor of ten, the weight would then be 2.5 t. However, the diameter would be 6.25 m. I essentially cut the size by half of that, then doubled the weight (well more than doubled) to justify the smaller form factor. The problem with a part like this is that one would normally need about 50 dawn engines to propel a craft as big as the Kerbodyne Plus Test Platform, but the endurance engines cut the part count down by a factor of ten. Not to mention the amount of energy generating parts you would need to supply those engines that the NRAX combines into one. Basically, I'm just trying to keep the gameplay balanced. I'd, love to hear anyone's suggestions that address those concerns! Again thanks for the feedback

[rabzoue59]

This is the good way to add part without break RAM lol

[Neutrinovore]

Huh, that's weird... I installed this mod last night, and I have exactly ZERO of the parts listed in the OP. All I did end up with was a 5 meter diameter decoupler and a really long blue fuel tank. Oh, wait, I did get the plasma engine and a really huge booster engine too. But that's it. I didn't have time to investigate last night, so it may be something I did wrong. But if I can't figure it out, I'll report back here.

Later!

Update: Yep, it was me! I borked everything by changing the name of the folder in GameData from 'Custom' to - funnily enough - 'KerboDyne_Plus'. Of course not realizing that you have model path hierarchies in almost all of your configs that REQUIRE the GameData folder to be named 'Custom'. So, no worries on your end, Bonus.

Now I'm off to try out these parts!

Edited June 13, 2015 by Neutrinovore
Updated information

[Bonus Eventus]

Huh, that's weird... I installed this mod last night, and I have exactly ZERO of the parts listed in the OP. All I did end up with was a 5 meter diameter decoupler and a really long blue fuel tank. Oh, wait, I did get the plasma engine and a really huge booster engine too. But that's it. I didn't have time to investigate last night, so it may be something I did wrong. But if I can't figure it out, I'll report back here.

Later!

Yeah, most of those other parts are in either structural or utility. PM me if they're still missing

[Neutrinovore]

Please see the update in my previous post.

[Bonus Eventus]

Please see the update in my previous post.

Glad it worked out! As you can see, I threw the download together rather loosely. I plan on renaming the mod folder on actual release. However, now I see I'll need to add a note about path dependency in the read me and release notes! Thanks Neutrinovore

[Tyren]

Grabbing it now.

[Tyren]

First attempt: complete fail. i didnt realize the actual thrust of the big liquid engine and it slammed itself right through the upper part of the mothership...FUNNYYYYYYY

[Megan]

Beautiful textures and models. The nuclear converter's electricity output looks all right from a balance perspective. Not sure about the xenon - I rarely use that resource so I have no opinion. You might want to give it a heatProduction value, though, and its price probably shouldn't be a negative half mil.

[Tyren]

After some other spins i am still not satisfied with those plasma thrusters...it is more efficient to slap some nervs on the ship. Not only regarding the isp, but the dV in a given time is that much higher.

[Bonus Eventus]

Beautiful textures and models. The nuclear converter's electricity output looks all right from a balance perspective. Not sure about the xenon - I rarely use that resource so I have no opinion. You might want to give it a heatProduction value, though, and its price probably shouldn't be a negative half mil.

Hahaha, oops! Should not be negative half a mil Adding that to the todo list! As to the xenon, i think I may add a second ModuleResourceConverter for the xenon, that way you can choose whether or not you want to convert that resource. As for heatProduction, it actually does. I'm still trying to find the right heat emissive rate so it doesn't auto blow up! I'm also considering designing some huge radial mounted radiators that fold out from the sides to help with that Thank you for the feedback, it was very helpful!

After some other spins i am still not satisfied with those plasma thrusters...it is more efficient to slap some nervs on the ship. Not only regarding the isp, but the dV in a given time is that much higher.

I'm experimenting with adding extra thrust to the plasma thrusters. One thought I had, was to increase their efficiency as you cluster the thrusters together, but that would require making the parts aware of each other at some level. To that end, I could add a unique resource that they share which is hidden from the player and carries a constant value but is not consumed, but is directly tied to isp. Thoughts? And again, thanks for the feedback Tyren, it's very much appreciated!

PS: Tyren, would you mind posting some pics of your craft? I'd like to see how people are designing with the parts

Edited June 15, 2015 by Bonus Eventus

[Megan]

Adding that to the todo list!

That one looks like an easy fix, actually. Some other modders ran into it before. This is probably the solution:

For some *unfathomable* reason, Squad decided that the cost of a part as specified in a cfg is the cost 'wet' rather than dry. Which means every time a resource has less than its maxAmount, the amount less than maxAmount is *subtracted* from the part's cost.

So you have to set cost (in the cfg) to be the cost dry PLUS the cost of all resources added.

Hope that helps.

As to the xenon, i think I may add a second ModuleResourceConverter for the xenon, that way you can choose whether or not you want to convert that resource.

Sounds good. Xenon has pretty specific uses. I always need electricity, but offhand I can't remember when I last wanted a constant supply of xenon. I mean, I'll slap some on the occasional late-game satellite, but that's it. By the time I have enough science points to unlock that node, I've usually sent up most of my critical satellites on Terriers or LVNs.

re: heat, Nertea and Randazzo have good mods to deal with the stock type.

[Nansuchao]

I'm experimenting with adding extra thrust to the plasma thrusters. One thought I had, was to increase their efficiency as you cluster the thrusters together, but that would require making the parts aware of each other at some level. To that end, I could add a unique resource that they share which is hidden from the player and carries a constant value but is not consumed, but is directly tied to isp. Thoughts? And again, thanks for the feedback Tyren, it's very much appreciated!

PS: Tyren, would you mind posting some pics of your craft? I'd like to see how people are designing with the parts

Plasma Thrusters can share EC clusted togheter, don't you think?

[Bonus Eventus]

Redesign of the plasma engine. The new thrust for the cluster will be 80kn total, 20kn per engine.

The design is inspired by the VASIMR engine. I felt that configuring the existing design into a 4 unit

cluster would justify the added thrust and efficiency.

UPDATE:

Just finished importing the new part. Seems to be working rather flawlessly. Might need to adjust the EC rate...

Edited June 18, 2015 by Bonus Eventus
added info

[Mekan1k]

*Drools over the glowing plasma thrusters*

[Bonus Eventus]

*Drools over the glowing plasma thrusters*

Haha, glad to hear it!

Finished with 6 more structural parts. 1.25m, 2.5m, and 3.75m version tall structural beams and omni-connectors.

Still working on the radiators, however now that 1.04 is out, that seems like a little unnecessaryâ€â€seeing as we now have large folding radiators :/

Toying around with a station-style inline command pod. This is a very early concept. Let me know if you have any part suggestions, anything I missed? Also do you think a command pod is a good/bad idea?

[Bonus Eventus]

I'm thinking that instead of a command pod, I should make a crew capsule or science lab.

Here's the second concept with that in mind.

[plague006]

Hey Bonus Eventus, I came here looking to add your mod to CKAN. I realize it's early, but since you have a KerbalStuff page it's easy for us to add. The only issue atm is your folder structure. As I read earlier in the thread, the folder name must be "Custom" and you plan on changing that later. That'll create issues down the line for CKAN, but if you're willing to change your folder name now/soon/in the next version, your mod can be added now and you'll never need to deal with it again. =)

If you want to wait to change your folder name (your prerogative) it would be really nice if you could notify us here when you do decide to change it.

PS. While I was mostly here looking for info related to adding the mod to CKAN: I was struck by the models, they look fantastic.

[Bonus Eventus]

Hey Bonus Eventus, I came here looking to add your mod to CKAN. I realize it's early, but since you have a KerbalStuff page it's easy for us to add. The only issue atm is your folder structure. As I read earlier in the thread, the folder name must be "Custom" and you plan on changing that later. That'll create issues down the line for CKAN, but if you're willing to change your folder name now/soon/in the next version, your mod can be added now and you'll never need to deal with it again. =)

If you want to wait to change your folder name (your prerogative) it would be really nice if you could notify us here when you do decide to change it.

PS. While I was mostly here looking for info related to adding the mod to CKAN: I was struck by the models, they look fantastic.

Thanks @plague006, I realized the issues you raised were present before I released the mod on kerbalstuff, that's the main reason that I added the alpha to the title. I plan on rolling out an update soon, which will fix those issues and put the mod into beta.

To anyone interested, I'm currently exporting all the textures to dds, committing to part naming conventions + descriptions (so saves won't break in future updates), updating the folder structure and cfgs (ie, from mesh to model module), and fixing a few bugs on the unity side such as lights not turning on during animations. That's what to expect in Kerbodyne Plus Beta. The crew cabin parts as well as some other features I'm experimenting with won't be in the beta update. I'm holding off until the update to unity 5 rolls out. I'm a little hesitant to do the work required when everything may change with the new version of part tools.