[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[JoseEduardo]

RO Apollo CSM and LEM use Aerozine50 and NTO, while RO Orion use MMH and NTO, usually in a 50/50 ratio or very close to it....

IMHO, for stock reasons 50/50 would be a better option than going for a specific amount for each engine (which would only make sense with RF and it's auto-fill button) and anyone of the two could be picked for all stock hypergolic engines, since this is for stock, not RO...

btw, Titan uses Hypergolic fuels aswell, Aerozine50 and NTO on both, first and second stages, just in case you ever want to make these engines (LR87 and LR91)  (LR-87 also had versions with Kerolox and Hydrolox, but IIRC all Gemini flights were with Aerozine50 and NTO)

[ComatoseJedi]

9 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

btw, I like Jedi's (you rebel scum)

Hey, before you start conflicting me with the Rebels, I am a "grey" Jedi. I have no side nor alignment. I come from the old republic, where my jedi character is a Shadow. And yes, I'm a Star Wars geek and have played countless hours on SW: TOR online as such :). But, I love your fervor.  

13 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

I will (most likely) be changing most of the engines and parts that currently use 'MonoPropellant' to use a true hypergolic bi-propellant from CRP

Good. It'll separate the men from the boys. 

[Jimbodiah]

CRP has hypergolics?

[ComatoseJedi]

4 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

CRP has hypergolics?

Yep, it does. It supports the Real Fuels mod. So, those hypergolic fuels are already defined. Why not use it? 

Edited April 7, 2016 by ComatoseJedi
edit

[JoseEduardo]

3 minutes ago, ComatoseJedi said:

Hey, before you start conflicting me with the Rebels, I am a "grey" Jedi. I have no side nor alignment. I come from the old republic, where my jedi character is a Shadow. And yes, I'm a Star Wars geek and have played countless hours on SW: TOR online as such :). But, I love your fervor.  

Good. It'll separate the men from the boys. 

I played SWG a long time ago, it was pretty cool but I worn out pretty quick, didn't even know a new SW MMO had been launched  Empire ftw! Kylo Ren brings shame to the dark side.... hope Disney turns him into a man in VIII, but idk... the character itself is a spoiled brat who wants to be bad and fights the light in him, he's not actually bad, he wants to.... just like college brats who want to be poor/socialist, but in reality they are just spoiled brats who have no idea of real life and have everything they want when they want.... while Vader went to the dark side because he didn't want to loose his beloved wife like he lost his mom and went nuts believing he lost his children too, basically he lost everything he loved (I know this wasn't planned when SW was released, that it was planned after that, but it fits the character)
 

7 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

CRP has hypergolics?

yep, the same Hydrolox you use in the stock version is used by RO, but in a different ratio...

if there was a way to have auto-fill tanks just like RF/MFT I would gladly make patches for stock and 10x kerbol (optional) for SSTU, having RL fuel, fuel ratios and thrust according to the scale (RW scale = 100% thrust, Stock scale = 40.96%) while keeping all the stock stuff in there (throttleable engines, no ullage, no ignitions... these would be left for RO)

[Shadowmage]

4 minutes ago, ComatoseJedi said:

I'm telling you, top shelf whiskey works wonders for just about anything that ails you. Trust me. I been drinking whiskey for medicinal purposes since I was a little boy and was common practice when your parents come from a generation when there was no such thing as a doctor visit. I'm not an alcoholic by a long shot, I haven't touched alcohol in years, but I will when I get sick/down and out and it fixes me right up. Not to mention, you see donkeys for a little while, which is a nice side effect. 

  LoL... I think I have most of a bottle of 12-year Macallan's around my house somewhere.  Perhaps not top-shelf, but likely as close as I will ever come as I don't really drink much...but far far better than some Jim or Jack.  Probably wouldn't help the quality of code that I write though

[CobaltWolf]

Just now, Shadowmage said:

  LoL... I think I have most of a bottle of 12-year Macallan's around my house somewhere.  Perhaps not top-shelf, but likely as close as I will ever come as I don't really drink much...but far far better than some Jim or Jack.  Probably wouldn't help the quality of code that I write though

I beg to differ.

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, CobaltWolf said:

I beg to differ.

Ahh, the balmer-peak;  I should have seen that one coming

 

 

1 hour ago, JoseEduardo said:

RO Apollo CSM and LEM use Aerozine50 and NTO, while RO Orion use MMH and NTO, usually in a 50/50 ratio or very close to it....

IMHO, for stock reasons 50/50 would be a better option than going for a specific amount for each engine (which would only make sense with RF and it's auto-fill button) and anyone of the two could be picked for all stock hypergolic engines, since this is for stock, not RO...

btw, Titan uses Hypergolic fuels aswell, Aerozine50 and NTO on both, first and second stages, just in case you ever want to make these engines (LR87 and LR91)  (LR-87 also had versions with Kerolox and Hydrolox, but IIRC all Gemini flights were with Aerozine50 and NTO)

I'll likely use a single set of resources for all 'hypergolic' fuel types; just so there is some consistency and compatibility across the parts that use them.  Single ratio is the only way to go.  If you want the full spectrum of ratios and fuels... well... that is exactly what Real-Fuels is for (and why the MFT's and engines support it; which is also why I won't be adding auto-fuel-setting to the MFTs... feel free to use RF if that is important to you... ). 

I'll be sticking with the realism-lite concept for now; same ratio across engines, semi-simplified fuels setup (though obviously slightly more complex than stock).  Mostly this will come into play if/when I add boil-off to LH2 (and possibly oxidizer, to lesser degree?); fuel-selection will be much more important for long-term missions, where hypergolics can often win out over LH2 just for there long-duration storage capabilities.  Your transfer stage might be LH2, but you'll likely use hypergolics for the insertion stage.  Of course, if I do implement boil-off, I'll likely have some options for zero-boil-off tanks that consume EC for refrigeration purposes.  Would also be cool to turn the boil-off into hydrogen gas to be used by fuel cells/etc...  but that is perhaps getting more complex than I want to get into

 

1 hour ago, JoseEduardo said:

IIRC Experimental Rocketry is there, hidden and unused by stock but it is there, I don't remember exactly which mods use that node though... I guess USI warp drive does?

btw, I like Jedi's (you rebel scum) idea of using a Colossal Rocketry node, M-1 engine could be used there... and if engine layouts could be locked to tech tree nodes (please don't, I beg ya, leave all until 9 unlocked from start if you ever go with this idea), 14 and 18 Nova MM-1B and 1C engine layouts could be unlocked there and maybe other monstrosities in between based around the Nova MM-1B/C

I won't be limiting engine-layouts by tech node; after all you can build those same clusters by hand, the only difference is the resulting part-count (and I feel the 'part limits' in career should be removed from the game entirely... part count !=complexity; its a purely artificial and aggravating constraint).

I don't think there is an experimental rocketry node, or there wasn't last I checked.  Yes, all other branches of the tree have an experimental node (most of them hidden in stock).. just not rocketry.  Not a big deal if I need to create it though; have played around with the tech-tree customization stuff a bit during the 1.0.x releases and am a bit familiar with it.

 

On the tech-tree / career progression subject -- I would not be opposed to some CTT integration at some point in the future;  but I would have to have a bit more experience and knowledge of CTT and how other mods are placed before I would be able to come up with decent configs for it.

[tater]

I've been using ETT, and I think I can mess with that tree a little at some point. Can't test 1.1 until it's past the whole Steam thing.

[Cheesecake]

Everytime I install SSTU KSP will not load. In my Log I have this entry:

 

Quote

[LOG 23:37:15.075] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'SSTU/Parts/LanderCore/LC2-CRG/SSTU_LanderCore_LC2-CRG'
[LOG 23:37:15.099] Could not locate part config from cached database for part: SSTU.LanderCore.LC2-CRG
[LOG 23:37:15.099] Could not locate part config from part.partInfo.partConfig for part: SSTU.LanderCore.LC2-CRG
[LOG 23:37:15.099] Could not locate part config from PartLoader.Instance.GetDatabaseConfig() for part: SSTU.LanderCore.LC2-CRG
[EXC 23:37:15.102] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
    SSTUTools.SSTUStockInterop.getPartModuleConfig (.Part p, .PartModule m)
    SSTUTools.SSTUAnimateControlled.initialize ()
    SSTUTools.SSTUAnimateControlled.OnLoad (.ConfigNode node)
    PartModule.Load (.ConfigNode node)
    Part.AddModule (.ConfigNode node)
    PartLoader.ParsePart (.UrlConfig urlConfig, .ConfigNode node)
    PartLoader+.MoveNext ()
[LOG 23:37:15.106] Could not locate part config from cached database for part: SSTU.LanderCore.LC2-CRG

I have a fresh install of 1.0.5. in older Versions I had the same problem with other parts of SSTU.

[Shadowmage]

26 minutes ago, Cheesecake said:

Everytime I install SSTU KSP will not load. In my Log I have this entry:

 

I have a fresh install of 1.0.5. in older Versions I had the same problem with other parts of SSTU.

You need to have moduleManager intalled, and a recent version at that (older ones lack the functions that SSTU relies on).

[Jimbodiah]

You should bundle it with your mod.

[Shadowmage]

Just now, Jimbodiah said:

You should bundle it with your mod.

I already do

[Jimbodiah]

AH   

[Cheesecake]

I had installed Module Manager, but the wrong Version (2.6.21 for KSP 1.1). With Version 2.6.18 it works. Thanks.

[JoseEduardo]

@Ourworldalpha1 I'm tagging you here because I saw the question in the real scale booster thread...

the SLS core tank is available but not out of the part list, SSTU tanks have changeable tank sizes, you can make the SLS core tank, but you'll need to select the proper height and proper engine cluster and mount

same way you can make DIRECT and Ares rockets with these tanks and others aswell (like Saturn family, Nova and Jarvis)

[Jimbodiah]

A lot of mounts were removed in the last 1.0.5 update. The straight engine mount (3 heights) replaced the plain rs68 style shroud and a some of the other mounts for some reason.

Edited April 8, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[MatttheCzar]

Does this mean we can get the Titan II engines?

[Shadowmage]

So... I've got good news and bad news for today:

Good news:  Most everything appears to work great during testing.  The gimbal bug was fixed, so engine clusters work again.  Split-thrust setups for the vernier-enabled engines are in and working.

Bad news:  The 'procedural drag-cubes for root part breaking map mode' bug did not get fixed.  Rather they made it so that fairings cannot be the root part (how does that fix it?)....  Ticket is still open, though no further information/updates have been posted in several days. 

I thought I had a hack/work-around in place by delaying the rendering of the drag cube; sadly this merely delays the manifestation of the problem; the moment the drag-cube is rendered, map mode is broken, even if the craft has been in flight for several minutes.  You can actually watch the map mode break if you switch to map-view when the drag-cube is updated;  the vessel map-pin and orbit lines disappear and

There is one more potential workaround that I can implement, however the work required to do so would be substantial and I will be waiting to see if the bug is fixed in future pre-release/1.1 final before I attempt to implement it (caching drag cubes from rendering in the editor and manually re-creating from stored data in flight-scene; requires a lot of per-module code changes, across many different modules; not so much fun, nor a very clean solution).
 

What this all means:  Sorry, still no release available.  The procedural drag cube bug breaks nearly every SSTU part when used as root (including command-pods), and I do not feel good about publishing a release with such game-breaking problems.  I had intended on publishing the first of the 1.1 compatible versions today, but cannot with such a large problem with so many parts.

I'm going to continue working on the upgrade process; still a fairly large list of things to finish up, clean up, and a full balance pass to be done on nearly all parts.  Hoping the drag cube bug gets fixed up so I can start publishing some testing releases soon.

[Sudragon]

Dang.

[ComatoseJedi]

Well.. at least we'll always have cake. You can never break cake. 

[Jimbodiah]

Sure you can.

[ComatoseJedi]

Jim, you can never break cake. Cake will always break you first. Fact!

 

[Jimbodiah]

LOL 

[Joco223]

@Shadowmage Umm, How do you set up PBR? It looks really nice, and i would like to try it out on some parts that i am making