Remote Tech, Standard or Root? (Realism Overhaul)

[CitizenVeen]

Hi everyone,

I see that in Realism Overhaul the standard setting for Remote Tech is Root, not standard. Why is this? Is that the way actual communication with space probes works? (couldn't find it, but I am a space-noob). Or is it because it might get to hard if set to standard? I kinda felt like I was cheating when I found this out...

Greetings!

[ABZB]

Basically:

Standard means that for any pair of antennas, the maximum range they can communicate at the least of the two ranges. So if you have a 10km and a 100km, the max range is only 10km.

 

Root means that for any pair of antennas, the maximum range they can communicate is the standard range + Square Root (range1 x range2). It caps the increase from "Square Root (range1 x range2)" to 100 times the standard range (for omnis) or 1000 times (for dish).

This is more realistic, in reality, probes have relatively low-power antenna, and we rely on having very powerful earth-based antennas to send & receive.

 

Realism Overhaul changes the ranges of the various antennas, as well as those settings, to create a reasonable approximation of that RL setup. If you change it back to Standard, it would be harder than RL - which is quite insane enough as it is!

Edited December 27, 2015 by ABZB

[CitizenVeen]

yeah I guess your right, 2 antenna in Root with the same range will still only get that range when trying to reach eachother.

Another question, I am trying to set up a network arround Earth with 4 satalites, the Communotron16 has a range of 4.0Mm, which I guess just won't cut it, as I need an altitude of atleast 2.4Mm with those 4 sats. What antenna's did you use? The only one with better range I got now, is the 88-88. But thats a dish, and there is no option that it will point automaticly to wathever satalite (or base) that can reach mission control?

[NathanKell]

1. Root is halfway between reality and the gamey standard metric RT uses (I wrote Root, for the record). In real life, range is mostly additive, it's not average at all.

2. You don't need a satellite network beyond LEO anyway, since once you're high enough you'll have LOS on the DSN stations with their giant dishes.  A pair of Comm16s per satellite is fine for an LEO network.

[CitizenVeen]

Whats the range on the DSN ground stations? 

Thanks alot for the replies guys

[NathanKell]

https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealSolarSystem/blob/master/GameData/RealSolarSystem/RemoteTech_Settings.cfg#L793

[CitizenVeen]

On 27-12-2015 at 6:23 AM, NathanKell said:

On 27-12-2015 at 9:53 PM, NathanKell said:

https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealSolarSystem/blob/master/GameData/RealSolarSystem/RemoteTech_Settings.cfg#L793

1. Root is halfway between reality and the gamey standard metric RT uses (I wrote Root, for the record). In real life, range is mostly additive, it's not average at all.

2. You don't need a satellite network beyond LEO anyway, since once you're high enough you'll have LOS on the DSN stations with their giant dishes.  A pair of Comm16s per satellite is fine for an LEO network.

Stupid question:

what does 1.104E+10 mean? Is it the same as 1.104e10 (which is 11 040 000 000 in normal decimal notation)?

[NathanKell]

@CitizenVeen yep, the + means it's a positive exponent (E-5 would be x 10^-5 instead).

[Kobymaru]

On 27.12.2015 at 6:23 AM, NathanKell said:

1. Root is halfway between reality and the gamey standard metric RT uses (I wrote Root, for the record). In real life, range is mostly additive, it's not average at all.

So if one antenna has a range of 100 Mm, the other one 10 Mm, then RT root range is sqrt(1000*10) Mm = 31,6 Mm; and in real life, it would be... 100+10 Mm = 110 Mm??

So even RT root is harder than in Real Life?

[komodo]

I think a lot of it as well is that in real life we have to deal with both power concerns, and the related issues of noise, which are both partly/entirely abstracted in RT. I'm reasonably sure it's an inverse square law problem, such that at the edges of your "range", the power requirements become impractical for the signal produced/received.

Is that perhaps what is attempting to be caught in the 'feel' of RSS RT?

</late night electromagnetical shower thoughts...> 

[NathanKell]

@komodo Yeah, path losses (I think that's the term) are inverse square, but really there's no "range" per se, rather effective bandwidth steadily decreases since you have to devote more and more to error checking and correction. Instead, RT just has a binary model, in-range / out-of-range.

EDIT: Derp. The losses are square, of course, it's the SNR that's inverse-square.

 

@Kobymaru yep, Root's still rather 'harder' than real life.