Sigma Dimensions

[thunder175]

For those using larger sized systems (such as the aforementioned 6.4x refactor) while playing in career mode, what parts packs or other mods are you using at lower tech levels in order to achieve decent suborbital and orbital flights? Reading history on the forums, I think this was the rationale for Nolnoc's 365 mod (3.2x planet scale, 6.4x interplanetary distance) since it is exceedingly difficult at true 6.4x scaling in career mode at lower tech tiers to achieve enough delta v.

[MrMeeb]

28 minutes ago, thunder175 said:

For those using larger sized systems (such as the aforementioned 6.4x refactor) while playing in career mode, what parts packs or other mods are you using at lower tech levels in order to achieve decent suborbital and orbital flights? Reading history on the forums, I think this was the rationale for Nolnoc's 365 mod (3.2x planet scale, 6.4x interplanetary distance) since it is exceedingly difficult at true 6.4x scaling in career mode at lower tech tiers to achieve enough delta v.

I find it's just a general difficulty of larger scaled stuff. Try a combination of SMURFF and procedural parts possibly  

[GreenWolf]

6.4x without some sort of adjustment of ISP and TWR is basically the KSP equivalent of amputating your foot before you go on a hike.

Seriously though, SMURFF or Real Fuels (with RL configs or custom 6.4x configs) is basically a requirement for this kind of thing. Otherwise it's harder than RO.

[MrMeeb]

10 hours ago, GreenWolf said:

6.4x without some sort of adjustment of ISP and TWR is basically the KSP equivalent of amputating your foot before you go on a hike.

Seriously though, SMURFF or Real Fuels (with RL configs or custom 6.4x configs) is basically a requirement for this kind of thing. Otherwise it's harder than RO.

Does Real Fuels help too? I've never really looked at it...maybe I should try it out

[thunder175]

Thanks for the reply. I knew I was missing something. I will try Smurff first as recomended. The added complexity of Real Fuels is something I'll take a look at later. 

[komodo]

@MrMeeb @thunder175, ROMini.cfg from RO is another option. I just posted some modifications I made as well, that compliment it. I only stick my head in here as your guys' posts inspired me to get off my *** and finally upload the tweaks i've been meaning to for the last while.

[MainSailor]

On 3/5/2016 at 4:47 AM, MrMeeb said:

Does Real Fuels help too? I've never really looked at it...maybe I should try it out

Real Fuels is going to do a number of things:

It will give you more of a challenge because you will have to balance engine types to a specific fuel mix. it can also limit ignitions, meaning that first stage engine with one ignitor is useless if you throttle down to zero, even if there's still fuel left in the tank.

It also makes things a little easier, it will rebalance fuel densities and fuel tanks to real world proportions. Like SMURFF this will make most tanks lighter. It will also dramatically improve the ISP of a lot of engines (Some fully cryogenic engines can approach 450 secs vacuum ISP.) However, Real Fuels in itself won't change stock engines, you either have to have an engine pack with RF support or something like Realism Overhaul which will patch stock and common engines to update their specs. I'd also strongly recommend Procedural Parts for tanks as you can build exactly the size tanks you need.

[MrMeeb]

3 hours ago, MainSailor said:

Real Fuels is going to do a number of things:

It will give you more of a challenge because you will have to balance engine types to a specific fuel mix. it can also limit ignitions, meaning that first stage engine with one ignitor is useless if you throttle down to zero, even if there's still fuel left in the tank.

It also makes things a little easier, it will rebalance fuel densities and fuel tanks to real world proportions. Like SMURFF this will make most tanks lighter. It will also dramatically improve the ISP of a lot of engines (Some fully cryogenic engines can approach 450 secs vacuum ISP.) However, Real Fuels in itself won't change stock engines, you either have to have an engine pack with RF support or something like Realism Overhaul which will patch stock and common engines to update their specs. I'd also strongly recommend Procedural Parts for tanks as you can build exactly the size tanks you need.

I've been using Procedural Parts and RealFuels with mixed success. I might look into RO to go with it. Not sure how I feel about the rescaling of things is the only problem. We'll see

Edited March 8, 2016 by MrMeeb

[MainSailor]

25 minutes ago, MrMeeb said:

I've been using Procedural Parts and RealFuels with mixed success. I might look into RO to go with it. Not sure how I feel about the rescaling of things is the only problem. We'll see

Rescaling - I would say that's my biggest stumbling block. What issues are you having with pParts and RF?

Edited March 8, 2016 by MainSailor

[MrMeeb]

Just now, MainSailor said:

Rescaling - I would say that's my biggest stumbling block. What issues are you having with pParts and RF?

I think it's simply readjusting to the new planet scale. After playing stock kerbin for such a long time, you become adjusted to the idea of "this size rocket will get this sized payload into orbit", due to the fairly large mass-fraction. Now that I have a tighter mass-fraction, I just need to adjust my standards. I'll get there  

[MainSailor]

4 minutes ago, MrMeeb said:

I think it's simply readjusting to the new planet scale. After playing stock kerbin for such a long time, you become adjusted to the idea of "this size rocket will get this sized payload into orbit", due to the fairly large mass-fraction. Now that I have a tighter mass-fraction, I just need to adjust my standards. I'll get there  

I misunderstood, I thought you meant the part rescaling that RO does.

I do like the additional challenge that a rescale offers, it was fun to go back after building what I considered pretty basic rockets in the stock game (easily lifting 80+ tons) to do research on real world rockets and see that say an Atlas V even in it's largest configuration (551) is only getting ~20t to LEO.

I haven't yet played career yet with that rescale though, I'm sure that's a bear to even get off the ground with (no pun intended).

[MrMeeb]

25 minutes ago, MainSailor said:

I misunderstood, I thought you meant the part rescaling that RO does.

I do like the additional challenge that a rescale offers, it was fun to go back after building what I considered pretty basic rockets in the stock game (easily lifting 80+ tons) to do research on real world rockets and see that say an Atlas V even in it's largest configuration (551) is only getting ~20t to LEO.

I haven't yet played career yet with that rescale though, I'm sure that's a bear to even get off the ground with (no pun intended).

Precisely...this 250t beast of a launcher can get a 12t to orbit with around 1.5k d/v left. It just feels so big for a 12t payload! (note everything is scaled...2.5m = 4m here).

Edited March 8, 2016 by MrMeeb

[komodo]

Regarding career mode in rescaled systems, I'll try to post some additional tweaks I've made, which are more to taste. some are from 64x as far as shuffling parts in the front of the tree, another which I haven't seen elsewhere is using custombarnkit to adjust the pad mass and dimension limits per building level. (I'm imaginative and multiplied the mass and (up; call it y) by 1.6. The x and z I left alone, as i mainly blow up rockets, less so spaceplanes. The same adjustment could be made there as well, though.

Im also one of those KCT and remotech loonies, so my experience may not be the norm. I would reccomend testing career with different funding modifiers for sure, as that is something I haven't nailed down a balanced number for yet. 110% is close, I think. Science is more subjective as well, although Minmus biome hoppers are very unlikely to be possible here. 

Rescaling parts, that's why I liked the script I wrote: it's fairly transparent as far as gameplay goes. KER is a must as always to build sane rockets, just with the goal of 8-9000 m/s dV for lainch. SMURFF would work more or less the same, more "build rockets", less "research how real rockets are built".

[thunder175]

I got done playing with a Dimensions 6.4x rescaled career using the recommended settings in the first post, as well as SMURFF set at 0.5. FAR is also installed. Started at lower tech levels with several addons, but was mostly building with the excellent SSTU pack and included engines.

The delta v requirements described in the original posting seem off, or I'm not doing something right. The recommended 6500-7000m/s requirement was not cutting it to achieve orbit. I went back and pulled up the 64K delta v map which says 7500m/s to LKO. That seemed a little better but it wasn't leaving me much beyond that. Maybe I didn't give the upper stage enough horsepower, as I was blowing past Ap.

MJ and Gravity Turn ascent guidance doesn't seem to like what I'm doing here either. Both were coming in way shallow leading to atmospheric overheats (RealHeat installed) despite changing the turn angle to both high and low settings. Played with first stage TWR settings of ~1.2 to close to ~1.5.

For career play, I still don't see how at lower tiers you can achieve orbit with the increased delta v requirements with SMURFF at 0.5 utilizing 1.25m rockets., without the use of parts packs. Fortunately SSTU easily allows increasing diameters of its parts, and 1.875m is now easy to do and looks smooth.

I know I'm doing something wrong still, or I'm just stuck in stock scale mentality. Would love to see everyone else's tweaks and settings, as well as any recommendations.

 

[MrMeeb]

1 hour ago, thunder175 said:

I got done playing with a Dimensions 6.4x rescaled career using the recommended settings in the first post, as well as SMURFF set at 0.5. FAR is also installed. Started at lower tech levels with several addons, but was mostly building with the excellent SSTU pack and included engines.

The delta v requirements described in the original posting seem off, or I'm not doing something right. The recommended 6500-7000m/s requirement was not cutting it to achieve orbit. I went back and pulled up the 64K delta v map which says 7500m/s to LKO. That seemed a little better but it wasn't leaving me much beyond that. Maybe I didn't give the upper stage enough horsepower, as I was blowing past Ap.

MJ and Gravity Turn ascent guidance doesn't seem to like what I'm doing here either. Both were coming in way shallow leading to atmospheric overheats (RealHeat installed) despite changing the turn angle to both high and low settings. Played with first stage TWR settings of ~1.2 to close to ~1.5.

For career play, I still don't see how at lower tiers you can achieve orbit with the increased delta v requirements with SMURFF at 0.5 utilizing 1.25m rockets., without the use of parts packs. Fortunately SSTU easily allows increasing diameters of its parts, and 1.875m is now easy to do and looks smooth.

I know I'm doing something wrong still, or I'm just stuck in stock scale mentality. Would love to see everyone else's tweaks and settings, as well as any recommendations.

 

Personally I use SMURFF set at 1. Don't ask why, I just like it better that way  I'm also using RealFuels Stock, FAR and @komodo's ROMini edit made for 6.4 scale. You can see the resulting launcher in the photo a few posts above  

Also,

1 hour ago, thunder175 said:

or I'm just stuck in stock scale mentality

I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE!  

 

Edit: Also, @Sigma88, what's the possibility of being able to reposition KerbinSide bases so they're not underground after scaling? I feel like it isn't as simple as adding a multiplier (not that any of this is as simple as that), but worth asking  

Edited March 9, 2016 by MrMeeb

[Sigma88]

1 hour ago, MrMeeb said:

Edit: Also, @Sigma88, what's the possibility of being able to reposition KerbinSide bases so they're not underground after scaling? I feel like it isn't as simple as adding a multiplier (not that any of this is as simple as that), but worth asking  

SD already has a compatibility cfg for ksc switcher and iirc kerbinside uses ksc switcher to reposition its bases

If it doesn't work I will take a look at it.

Anyways, I'm learning to write c# code so if SigmaBinary.dll proves to be a success I may look into porting SD into  plugin as well

 

(Thomas will probably kill me )

Edited March 9, 2016 by Sigma88

[MrMeeb]

10 minutes ago, Sigma88 said:

SD already has a compatibility cfg for ksc switcher and iirc kerbinside uses ksc switcher to reposition its bases

(Thomas will probably kill me )

My mistake! Muddled my mods  I meant to ask about Kerbal Konstructs...for things like KSC++ and the Launchpad Floodlights  

[Sigma88]

1 minute ago, MrMeeb said:

My mistake! Muddled my mods  I meant to ask about Kerbal Konstructs...for things like KSC++ and the Launchpad Floodlights  

I have no idea of what that is. Could you like me those mods here so I can check them out when I have time

[MrMeeb]

Just now, Sigma88 said:

I have no idea of what that is. Could you like me those mods here so I can check them out when I have time

Sure  KSC++ (scroll down a bit) and KSC Floodlights

[komodo]

@MrMeeb I have absolutely no idea what ROMini combined with realfuels stockalike pack would do. It seems that it would double rescale the masses/densities to something unpredictable. It would be interesting to see none the less... And SMURFF as well? You may want to check the configs to see if they are all active: it may be that some are detecting the others and disabling themselves, but I'd have to check. If they are all going, you shouldn't have any problem getting to orbit, haha!

On gravity turn autopilot, yeah, it doesn't quite understand about atmospheric heating. I've had good luck with it with a start angle of 5-9 degrees, initial time of 70-90 seconds, final time 40 sec, and sensitivity around 0.4-0.5. Altitude should be pretty high for a "low" orbit, ~500 km or so. 

Mechjeb ive not tried in a while to see how it might act. 

Edited March 9, 2016 by komodo
I accidentally the entire second half.

[MrMeeb]

5 minutes ago, komodo said:

@MrMeeb I have absolutely no idea what ROMini combined with realfuels stockalike pack would do. It seems that it would double rescale the masses/densities to something unpredictable. It would be interesting to see none the less... And SMURFF as well? You may want to check the configs to see if they are all active: it may be that some are detecting the others and disabling themselves, but I'd have to check. If they are all going, you shouldn't have any problem getting to orbit, haha!

On gravity turn autopilot, yeah, it doesn't quite understand about atmospheric heating. I've had good luck with it with a start angle of 5-9 degrees, initial time of 70-90 seconds, final time 40 sec, and sensitivity around 0.4-0.5. Altitude should be pretty high for a "low" orbit, ~500 km or so. 

Mechjeb ive not tried in a while to see how it might act. 

Let's just say I like easy harder mode  It is possible one is disabling/overwriting another as they're all applied in turn by ModuleManager, but who knows...it works for me and I'm finding it harder than stock KSP. Besides, my 250t rocket for a 12t payload feels about right for this scale, seeing as an Atlas 551 can get 20t into LEO and it weighs 587t. I'm too lazy to investigate them all on their own/in different combinations, so bleh  

[komodo]

On 3/9/2016 at 1:42 PM, MrMeeb said:

Let's just say I like easy harder mode  It is possible one is disabling/overwriting another as they're all applied in turn by ModuleManager, but who knows...it works for me and I'm finding it harder than stock KSP. Besides, my 250t rocket for a 12t payload feels about right for this scale, seeing as an Atlas 551 can get 20t into LEO and it weighs 587t. I'm too lazy to investigate them all on their own/in different combinations, so bleh  

Fun is what it's all about, I just was disavowing myself of any lawsuits your Kerbals might level

I loaded up some small MM tweaks on my Fork thread, as I mentioned above... (three days after the fact...)

[davidy12]

@Sigma88: Are you ever going to add Kerbal Konstructs support?

[Sigma88]

1 hour ago, davidy12 said:

@Sigma88: Are you ever going to add Kerbal Konstructs support?

I can take  look to see if it's possible...

If it is, I will add compatibility as soon as I have the time

[armegeddon]

On 2/27/2016 at 7:37 AM, Sigma88 said:

antennarange and remote tech are coming in the next release

RT is simply a matter of changing RangeMultiplier in RemoteTech_Settings.cfg. It should be changeable with a MM patch, but haven't tried myself.

Also, what about supporting SCANSat and resource scanning?  Personally, I think the scan altitudes should be somewhat connected to the radius of the planets, instead of arbitrary values. Especially since it would be possible to rescale to sizes that either put the best/max altitude inside the atmosphere on large scales, or outside the SOI on small scales.  Right now I have a MM config patching each part individually since I don't completely understand the search functions of MM, but I would think it should be possible to search for the altitude variables and multiply them by whatever the rescale value is.