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

[JoseEduardo]

on top of that, I would reccomend Horizons if you don't have the base Elite... there are some stuff coming for Horizons that will be added for base Elite, but idk, I feel like I paid too much for a small extra... (even though steam and Frontier are being very nice to us brazilians, charging us ~3BRL = 1USD, cheaper than what it would actually cost, and way better than what Bethesda did with Fallout 4, which is 4BRL = 1USD (actual current rate), but still, it's far harder for us to make R$60 than it is for an average american, canadian or european to make $60, let alone making R$190...) especially considering Elite owners will get some of the stuff Horizons will have... except for planetary landings (airless bodies) of course, and I feel that multi-crew and vehicle bays (for fighters) won't come to Elite-only owners either, maybe Elite owners will get the character customization part...

granted, horizons owners won't be getting planetary landings on atmospheric bodies... I hope they can have the lifetime expansion pass again and at a accessible rate for brazilians  would be far cheaper than buying a new game every year, that's for sure... (they aim at releasing a new season every year, like PES, FIFA and other sports games... reason why, even though I'm brazilian and I do like football/soccer, I don't buy these and even though I did buy Horizons, I don't think I'll be buying a new one each year if they keep the same model...)

btw, horizons players play in the same universe as regular Elite owners, and future seasons will also have that, so it doesn't matter if I have Horizons and someone doesn't, we can still play together, it's just that those who doesn't have Horizons won't be able to land on Mun/Minmus/Moho/Dres/Eeloo/etc alike planets/moons

easy flow chart for anyone considering Elite
Do you like Euro-truck Simulator/Flight Simulator/18 Wheels of Steel?
Yes                                      No
 V                                          V
Do you like space?       Don't go for it
Yes                   No (wth would you be doing in a Kerbal forum playing Kerbal in the first place?)
 V                       V
Go for it     Think twice

11 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

And, I had to take a few minutes to try out Unity-5, just to see what it had to offer.  First test was to import the J-2 model and setup the material/etc with the existing textures.

-Lots- of shiny.  Yes, reflections work.  Will have a bit of learning to do to set things up to look properly (and not all plastic-wrapped-looking), but overall I'm fairly impressed with the first test of the system.  I still cannot find how to assign AO maps to a second UV set, so I'm still not sure how to setup texture-sharing with this system (doesn't seem possible with the stock 'standard' shader.. it specifically uses UV0 for ao), but will look into that when I'm actually working on the stuff.

However, this does mean that doing all of the texture conversion and re-creating materials/etc after 1.1 is released... could take some time.

 

that pic pretty much settles it... I'll be playing Elite until 1.1 is out and SSTU for 1.1 is also out... (and FarCry Primal if it is released before 1.1)

[Jimbodiah]

Fighting against KSP again today... My career save has tons of Kraken issues again when I dock, and the game drops fps like a mofo when you punt in 3+ kerbals. (bare SC-C-CM without kerbals = 60fps, with 3+ kerbals 35-40fps, add a large ship then count on 15fps). Every time I progress to the end of the techtree and start getting a nice infrastructure with bases and shuttles for moons/tourists/rescues almost every time I dock the entire stations shakes apart. I;m down to 2 parts mods now and some basic alarmclock/mechjeb/KRJ stuff. The fun is pretty much gone.

[JoseEduardo]

1 minute ago, Jimbodiah said:

Fighting against KSP again today... My career save has tons of Kraken issues again when I dock, and the game drops fps like a mofo when you punt in 3+ kerbals. (bare SC-C-CM without kerbals = 60fps, with 3+ kerbals 35-40fps, add a large ship then count on 15fps). Every time I progress to the end of the techtree and start getting a nice infrastructure with bases and shuttles for moons/tourists/rescues almost every time I dock the entire stations shakes apart. I;m down to 2 parts mods now and some basic alarmclock/mechjeb/KRJ stuff. The fun is pretty much gone.

I have SSTU and a few other part mods (Salyut, Mir and Buran), plus RO, mechjeb and others that add/change functionality but aren't part mods, and the constant crashes made me loose the fun in KSP too, hence why I'm waiting for stable x64....

[Jimbodiah]

I'm beginning to fear that 1.1/x64 will not solve the problems there are present right now. I hardly see any comments from Squad about this, or even acknowledgement of these bugs being reported.

[Shadowmage]

16 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

Fighting against KSP again today... My career save has tons of Kraken issues again when I dock, and the game drops fps like a mofo when you punt in 3+ kerbals. (bare SC-C-CM without kerbals = 60fps, with 3+ kerbals 35-40fps, add a large ship then count on 15fps). Every time I progress to the end of the techtree and start getting a nice infrastructure with bases and shuttles for moons/tourists/rescues almost every time I dock the entire stations shakes apart. I;m down to 2 parts mods now and some basic alarmclock/mechjeb/KRJ stuff. The fun is pretty much gone.

 

9 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

I have SSTU and a few other part mods (Salyut, Mir and Buran), plus RO, mechjeb and others that add/change functionality but aren't part mods, and the constant crashes made me loose the fun in KSP too, hence why I'm waiting for stable x64....

 

Believe me... I know the feeling.  Is why I mostly do modding at the moment;  I can't even play my career games due to poor performance (part count/physics) and crashes (OPM/Kopernicus related issues).

 

Docking -- I have noticed a null-ref from the SSTU docking ports in the editor (have not tested stock ports to see if they do it); but it is related to the editor-tests rather than the actual function of the docking port, so I'm not sure if it actually has any effect while in-flight.  Sadly my available time to test things in-game is... not quite adequate to actually test everything.  However, if you can come up with a simple (sstu+stock parts) craft that duplicates the problem reliably, I will gladly investigate... just gotta have a place to start the investigation from.

However, also, the stock code for running docking ports is... well... less than optimized, as some of the tests by riocrokite showed (massive performance drops just having ports -on- a ship.. whether they were docked/undocked/whatever did not matter).

Strange though that just having kerbals present would decrease the FPS so noticeably (unless it is related to the IVA pictures; have heard of issues with those before regarding frame-rate).  As you saw earlier in the week though, my computer is not the best test-case for many of the performance related problems; I probably wouldn't notice them much unless it was a -massive- problem.  Hmm... perhaps I should setup KSP on my media computer for a lower-performance-testing setup? (i5 2500k @ 3.3ghz, 4g (might be 8? don't remember.. it just plays movies/tv shows) ddr3, gtx460x2 (sli; disabled...))

 

Kraken - I've certainly seen my share of exploding stations after docking (or undocking, or merely coming within physics loading range, or a myriad of other causes).  Generally for me though restarting the game will solve it for a short time, until I jump between ships too many times.  And of course, it always seems to manifest much worse the further you get in your game.  I've rarely been able to do outside-of-Kerbin-SOI missions because usually by the time I get there (progression wise) the game is so unstable (and performs so terribly with the interplanetary craft) its mostly just aggravating to play.

I certainly hope that the move to PhysX 3.x improves some of the stability of the underlying simulation.  Sadly, we won't know until 1.1 is released.. as Squad is being extremely quiet on the subject.

[Jimbodiah]

I have the same thing along the progression of a carreer. The further I get, the worse it is. In the beginning it is rock-solid, huge stations, 5 ships docked, ATV in the back... little lag. Then by the time I have all science from mun/minmus and am prepping to go to Duna, I get Krakens on even small stations with 2-3 ships docked on it, up to the point that even one is touch-and-go. It;s freaking rediculous.

I run a 4790K @ 4GHz, 16GB ram, only blazing fast SSDs (windows 7 boots so fast the windows icon does not even have time to complete). My GPU is a GTX 650 Ti Boost, not a GTX970, ut not too shabby either. Runs 3D shooters with no effort. My PC is not the problem, KSP is.

So I now have two career saves that are maxed in science and have a fleet of ships underway to Duna and preps for Eve, and I am about to just delete them all as they are basically frustrating to play. And sandbox has it's usefulness, but without anything to do, it's gets boring fast. Running rescues, tourists and satelities at least gave me something to do in the meantime, and it;s not like it's hard to get all the science or money you need to play like it is a sandbox.

And without mods, the ships just look ridiculous and god-awful. Not to mention part counts that are ludicrous because the entire game is made to be played using 0.625 and 1.25m parts it seems. Blegh... I just gave up on my latest career as of today. Sent my Kerbals out to see if they could land on the Mun/Minmus just with eva. Minmus is actually quite easy to reach escape velocity from, or just EVA and land on it. What else can I do to have some fun?

Edited January 21, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Jimbodiah]

Re the ports... I've checked logs before but could never find anything. I have just removed basically all other parts mods, but building stations is kind of hard with only crappy stock parts. I'll rig an Orion to just be OP as fak to simulate my NF prop setups for orbital stuff (120 thrust, 4200isp running on Xenon, 16k dV whuhahahah), maybe test docking, but I doubt it will show up with just SSTU parts.

[JoseEduardo]

30 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

What else can I do to have some fun?

here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/419270 

agree on the stock parts, sometimes I feel bad for having mods and basically dumping stock and stock play-style, but then I see their size, and how much I can do and jump straight back to mods

1.25m to me are sounding rockets, and 2.5m small rockets, not only in RO, even stock ksp feels that way for me, I can't see 3.75m rockets as analogues to SLS/DIRECT/Ares/Shuttle....

[Jimbodiah]

I only use 1.875" main cores for sending up small probes, second stage might be 1.25m. But anything else starts at 2.5m with the A/B series pods. 2.5m seems to be a realistic size for stock rockets, 3.75 a very good second. I have a 3.75m Delta IV Heavy that is my workhorse for sending up sorts of stuff, seconded with and Ares I setup for lighter stuff and crews. I think landing legs, probe cores and science parts are the only stock things I use. Never saw any use for space planes as they are a PITA to get into orbit and to do anything with, that a rocket can not do more easily.

I've tried an RO install twice now, but textures are buggy as ... and I can't get anything into orbit (had a 25k dV rocket with 45k thrust and still did not make 70km apoapsis with a mk1 capsule before splashing down just over cuba.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[JoseEduardo]

IMHO spaceplanes should either be SSTO or as a way to return stuff, like satellites, telescopes (cacteye), station parts, or even as a SpaceLab analogue mission, and maybe as a massive transport (the real question here is... what would be the purpose of launching 30 little green men to crowd a space station?), other than that any rocket can do better and easier

[Jimbodiah]

I used to collect tourist contracts and send a mk3 transport (16 kerbals) to land on the moon etc and dump them back into the atmosphere. This is where I ran into massive lag and found out the kerbals are the cause of it.

[blowfish]

37 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

I used to collect tourist contracts and send a mk3 transport (16 kerbals) to land on the moon etc and dump them back into the atmosphere. This is where I ran into massive lag and found out the kerbals are the cause of it.

Yeah, it turns out the IVAs end up being really costly in terms of performance.  I think Taverius experimented a while back and found 12 to be the practical limit for the number of kerbals.

[Jimbodiah]

I already get noticable fps drop and lag with just 2-3 on board. With 6 in the Orion pod frame rate is at 35fps and jerky gameplay, 16 is like you have a stutter in your brain. Can't believe Squad hasn't done anything about this already, it's not like it isn't noticeable.

btw: I had a topic about this here somewhere, and someone gave a cfg that removed the animations, I just tried it. It no longer shows the kerbals and fps is at a constant 60fps now (I set that limit in the settings).

Edited January 22, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

Updated testing release is available:

WARNING: Some of these changes may be save breaking (fairing texture stuff, it might not load properly, untested).

https://github.com/shadowmage45/SSTULabs/releases/tag/0.3.27-pre1

Change log is behind the link, with the downloads.  -Lots- of updates and changes... snuck in a couple bugfixes as well.

 

And just because

 

 

[JoseEduardo]

is that the birth of the Station parts using a Apollo-Soyuz-Orion docking mechanism?

[Jimbodiah]

LOL!!!  Agena prototype.

All three SSTU generations combined. Waiting for the Kraken, he will not approve!

And is that gold-foil I see... Ooooh shiny\!!!  Aaaawwww

Here my Delta IV with other texture (yes, not original) and the new engine shrouds.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Shadowmage]

3 hours ago, JoseEduardo said:

is that the birth of the Station parts using a Apollo-Soyuz-Orion docking mechanism?

Sadly, its just some stock stuff I threw together for testing RCS/docking/re-entry from the three pods.  Thought it looked cool with all three of them together though, or at least a comparison that hasn't been shown before.

 

2 hours ago, Jimbodiah said:

LOL!!!  Agena prototype.

All three SSTU generations combined. Waiting for the Kraken, he will not approve!

And is that gold-foil I see... Ooooh shiny\!!!  Aaaawwww

Here my Delta IV with other texture (yes, not original) and the new engine shrouds.

Very nice, Its looking about right

Sadly, no gold foil -- I won't be doing any such until 1.1 with the shader updates, where I can make it actually look like foil.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Shadowmage

[Jimbodiah]

The ICPS is 30% lighter than the equivalent lifting tank with same engine, giving about 25% more dV. Is this intentional, or just "needs moar balance" ? Also price point needs to be balanced for the ICPS/HUS. Should I make a PR with suggestions?

[Shadowmage]

20 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

The ICPS is 30% lighter than the equivalent lifting tank with same engine, giving about 25% more dV. Is this intentional, or just "needs moar balance" ? Also price point needs to be balanced for the ICPS/HUS. Should I make a PR with suggestions?

Is that with stock fuels, or the LH2 patch?  Either way, it is likely that the fuel quantity and/or mass have merely been miscalculated -- they should have the same dry-mass ratio as an equivalent tank (of the same volume)(minus the minor mass addition of the engine).

Feel free to post a comment in the 'balance' issue with your suggestions, and I will work on adding them into the balance sheet and updating the parts if they look appropriate.

 

 

And in regards to tech-tree balance in general:

Spent a bit of time last night looking over the tech-tree, trying to figure out where to place stuff, and it became pretty apparent that the stock tech tree will never work appropriately for any kind of realistic progression.  The stock tech-tree just stops halfway to Apollo/Saturn level of tech (by size), never actually reaching it, and certainly not accommodating the last 40+ years worth of progress that has been made since then.

I could certainly just slot my parts in with the best-fitting-stock analogues; but then 3/4 of SSTU parts will still be stuck in 'Very Heavy Rocketry'; which I don't consider to be much fun from from a career progression standpoint.

I don't really want to undertake a full rebalance of the stock tech-tree, nor deal with the incompatibilities and inconsistencies this would create with other mods.

I would consider adopting some other external tech tree (such as CTT), but last I looked, those tech trees still presented the same problems (e.g. 3.75m stuff slotted at the end of the tree, not leaving any room for progression to 5m/6.25m parts).

Any suggestions / comments / feedback / ideas?

[Jimbodiah]

That is dry weight as I sized the MFT have the same volume of LH2/Ox as the ISPC.

Tech balance: For a career and no dependencies (CTT) or your own nodes (needs more science to unlock), I'd just follow stock tech levels. Put in the small ones first, no clusters until later, add the J2/H1 early on somewhere, F1B a step later, F1B later, RS25 still later, RS68 near the end. The techtree is not realistic, but it should be playable so you can get SSTU engines that are equivalent to what KSP offers without needing to unlock twice the science. I hate using freaking skippers and swivels all the way up the tree and then going straight to unlocking Near Future engines and SSTU engines. This means I will never use most of them as I can use NF engines or the Nerv now for orbital stuff, but have been agonizing with stock engines right up until that point with no other options. The contrast should not be too big. I don;t see the techtree as a time-line, rather as a career progression (getting more science as you go from Mun to Minmus, by that time you will have 3/4 of the tree cleared if you gather all the science. I basically clear most of the tech I need by doing two runs to the Mun and two to minmus, progressing the rocket I use each time. First one is a godawful KSP contraption, the second already starts to use some other mod parts, third is a full fledged SSTU with nukes/NFprop.

[blowfish]

CTT adds some additional nodes beyond Very Heavy Rocketry: Experimental, Gigantic, and Colossal Rocketry (I think Experimental Rocketry used to be a stock node).  You're still somewhat limited to the stock "bigger = more advanced" paradigm.

[Shadowmage]

14 minutes ago, blowfish said:

CTT adds some additional nodes beyond Very Heavy Rocketry: Experimental, Gigantic, and Colossal Rocketry (I think Experimental Rocketry used to be a stock node).  You're still somewhat limited to the stock "bigger = more advanced" paradigm.

I think that is probably a large part of the problem; the stock tech tree is indeed balanced towards bigger=better; which is patently not the case.  Not to mention the whole 'starting manned' problem (really, the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the tech-tree should be building up to figuring out -how- to get kerbals safely into space and back down).  Trying to view it as a timeline is probably also part of my problem.... its all backwards/mixed up, and stops in the late 60's....

Engines -- seem to be the most difficult parts to balance, due to the stock setup, with perhaps tanks or pods/service modules coming in as a close second.

As an example from the GitHub conversation, the Merlin-1D is superior to the F1 in nearly every stat that matters (ISP, TWR), but is most definitely a smaller engine, and should be placed later in the tech tree due to the... well, technology needed to create it.  The problem there is that stock would place the F1 at the end of the tech tree (being the biggest engine, and the tanks for it not being unlocked until then), leaving no room for advancement/upgrading to the Merlin.

Even using CTT and its extra 'more advanced' nodes wouldn't really solve the problem (and would probably just make it worse), as the player would still need to do most of Mun/Minmus (and unlock 3/4 of the tree) before they could unlock the tech that is -supposed- to take them there in the first place (e.g. Apollo-era stuff, specifically the tanks/engines).  Nor would placing the Merlin into 'Gigantic Rocketry' make much sense.

I suppose I need to decide if I'm going to go for 'timeline' type progression, or stock 'bigger=better' type progression.  A timeline-type progression would place stuff like the F1 squarely in the lower-half of the tech-tree, somewhere close to stock 2.5m unlocks (along with RL10, J-2, H-1...), with the RS-25 somewhere near the 1/2 to 2/3 mark, and the RS-68, F1B, and merlins at the end of the tree.  Stock progression would see nearly the opposite positioning for most of the engines. 

I also think it would be cool to have some 'upgraded' parts near the end of the tree, such as the Merlin engines and J-2X, so that your space program can become more-efficient as time goes on (rather than just using larger rockets); where these would be positioned in a node that the player has to work on a bit to unlock (1000+ science nodes).  So they already have stuff that 'works', but can optionally work towards tangibly 'better' stuff if they want.

And I suppose another part of the problem that I'm facing is my....assumption?... need?... want?... for players to have access to realistic-progression-technology for their operations; e.g. Apollo-era gear for exploring the Mun.  I'm just not sure how to reconcile that versus the stock tech-tree setup while maintaining compatibility with other mods.

LoL... I should probably just stop now before I give myself a headache.  I'm in no rush to get things slotted on the tech tree (my goal is sometime -after- 1.1 is released), so have a bit of time to weigh options, try out various balances, etc.  I'm sure that we (collectively) can figure out something acceptable, as it sounds like we are all on generally the same train of thought regarding progression.

[ComatoseJedi]

Yeah, @Shadowmage. You really don't need to rush this, because it is a big step towards a release. The thing with CTT and having your own mod is that you can choose where ever you want to put your parts at to be unlocked. It makes sense to think about your engines and think of the technology timeline to base it off of. There are other technology nodes to unlock that may be used, creatively, to unlock more parts/sizes. Even looking down the road towards interstellar space travel, you'll have to broaden your scope on what kind of technology you'd want to work on to make this happen. Even having to consider logistics is a nightmare. But, first things first, let's get it off the ground, then we can sling it out to Jool. 

[Jimbodiah]

I've already been to Eeloo with these parts

[Shadowmage]

9 hours ago, Jimbodiah said:

The ICPS is 30% lighter than the equivalent lifting tank with same engine, giving about 25% more dV. Is this intentional, or just "needs moar balance" ? Also price point needs to be balanced for the ICPS/HUS. Should I make a PR with suggestions?

I narrowed this down to me giving it the wrong mass for the engine when I was hastily filling in the configs.  I put in 0.5t, where it should have been 1.6t.  The resultant change should give them the same mass fraction as the rest of the tanks (15% of fuel mass) regarding their dry mass minus the engine mass.  Will be available with the next update.