[1.12.x] Kerbal Atomics: fancy nuclear engines! (August 18, 2024)

[ThreePounds]

I translated this magnificent mod into German - which was quite a joy because of the interesting flavour text.

The pull request is already on GitHub.

[Nertea]

On 9/13/2017 at 6:58 PM, Ivy said:

I'm getting a real strange problem with any nuclear engine, apparently (happened with the good ol' original nuclear engines as well but I thought little of it, maybe a one-time bug). Apparently the engines will just straight up stop providing thrust after existing for a while after their initialization. Even restarting the game hasn't fixed it. 

As you can see, the engines are receiving full fuel and burning it appropriately, but no thrust is exerted. I had originally managed to raise my orbit to that elliptical height with these same engines, but now I can't budge at all.

It would appear you are not using any advanced integrations, so those are just parts... pretty looking parts, but just parts. I'm going to have to chock that up to a mod integration unless you get get reliable reproduction steps.

10 hours ago, Three_Pounds said:

I translated this magnificent mod into German - which was quite a joy because of the interesting flavour text.

The pull request is already on GitHub.

Glad you appreciated the descriptions, thanks!

[Ivy]

6 hours ago, Nertea said:

It would appear you are not using any advanced integrations, so those are just parts... pretty looking parts, but just parts. I'm going to have to chock that up to a mod integration unless you get get reliable reproduction steps.

I suppose I'll have to look deeper into this; my biggest concern is how they worked fine for the first few minutes and then ceased to function. What exactly do you mean by "advanced integrations"?

[Blackline]

Question/remark regarding the KerbalAtomicsLF.cfg patch:

OT mentions:

Install the NTRsUseLF patch in the Extras folder.  << please mention to use exactly that folder: NTRsUseLF, because SOME MM patches have a :NEEDS[!NTRsUseLF] for it.

But still, most of your MM patches within ..\KerbalAtomics\Patches\NTR still apply LH2, the only exception being hydrogenNTRsSQUAD.cfg and LH2NTRsDynamic.cfg. Is this by purpose? Patches like hydrogenNTRsNovaPunch.cfg directly apply stuff to the part, without checking for a :NEEDS[!NTRsUseLF]. I'd delete the whole ..\NTR for now.

[Nertea]

On 9/16/2017 at 10:53 PM, Ivy said:

I suppose I'll have to look deeper into this; my biggest concern is how they worked fine for the first few minutes and then ceased to function. What exactly do you mean by "advanced integrations"?

Yeah which makes little sense considering the scope of the mod. 

Advanced integrations means the NFE NTR support patch.

2 hours ago, Blackline said:

Question/remark regarding the KerbalAtomicsLF.cfg patch:

OT mentions:

Install the NTRsUseLF patch in the Extras folder.  << please mention to use exactly that folder: NTRsUseLF, because SOME MM patches have a :NEEDS[!NTRsUseLF] for it.

But still, most of your MM patches within ..\KerbalAtomics\Patches\NTR still apply LH2, the only exception being hydrogenNTRsSQUAD.cfg and LH2NTRsDynamic.cfg. Is this by purpose? Patches like hydrogenNTRsNovaPunch.cfg directly apply stuff to the part, without checking for a :NEEDS[!NTRsUseLF]. I'd delete the whole ..\NTR for now.

Problem is probably that most of those files should be gone bleh I'll fix it whenever/in 2 months.

[Ivy]

I'm still losing my mind over the dang thrustless nuclear engines. I reinstalled all my mods so it wasn't just a plain anomaly, but I have no idea where to begin in terms of stripping down mods.

Edit: Well, they are working on a new save file after the reinstall. It might just be this rocket that's cursed at this point; I've terminated it in the hopes that a future one will follow in the functional footsteps of this sandbox one!

Edited September 19, 2017 by Ivy

[KSPNoob]

Super confused on something.  Love the engines (like all your mods) and like playing with hydrogen instead of liquid fuel but is there a way to not need uranium for them?   I was using one of the engines and noticed that I was consuming uranium as I went so I stuck some uranium canisters from the NFE mod of yours but it wouldn't let me transfer the uranium from  them to the engine.  I went ahead and then added the NFE NTR mod which let me transfer uranium but I really don't like the engine reactor aspect.  

NVM just did a search and saw you meant the Emancipator engine to be either 1 and done or have to put up with the NFE stuff.  I dont mind all that much but it is a really nice engine, but I understand for balance sake why you did it with its ridiculously high ISP and thrust.

Edited September 20, 2017 by KSPNoob

[Ivy]

I caught what's happening with the nuclear engines on video. This one very reliably ceases to function at 80 m/s for no discernible reason. The strangest thing is that it maintains that speed (fluctuating based on rotation?) until the rocket spontaneously dissociates from stress and the game engine realizes "oh right, that's not supposed to be happening" and puts gravity back into place.

 

[Nergal8617]

1 hour ago, Ivy said:

I caught what's happening with the nuclear engines on video. This one very reliably ceases to function at 80 m/s for no discernible reason. The strangest thing is that it maintains that speed (fluctuating based on rotation?) until the rocket spontaneously dissociates from stress and the game engine realizes "oh right, that's not supposed to be happening" and puts gravity back into place.

I have been completely unable to replicate this behavior with the Scylla, I've even gotten my rocket going fast enough before leaving the atmosphere to get heating effects.  Without knowing what your mod list looks like I can't even begin to guess where the problem is coming from.

[Pthigrivi]

Hey guys, Im looking to integrate this mod into an existing save but Im worried about it mucking things up with my active flights. I have half a dozen right now with LV-N's on them that won't wind down anytime soon. My preference would be to either run all the new engines on LF or switch everything over to LH2. The latter would, Im guessing, involve digging into my persistent file and changing the fuel type in each of those tanks (or something?). What would people recommend as the simplest/most reliable course?

[Pthigrivi]

Sorry, had to go back a few pages to find the answer. All good

Edited September 21, 2017 by Pthigrivi

[Ivy]

12 hours ago, Nergal8617 said:

I have been completely unable to replicate this behavior with the Scylla, I've even gotten my rocket going fast enough before leaving the atmosphere to get heating effects.  Without knowing what your mod list looks like I can't even begin to guess where the problem is coming from.

It's a miracle that this is the only major bug I have with this setup.

 

@Pthigrivi If you make the LV-Ns use liquid fuel, the existing ones should continue to function just fine with no losses. The boiloff is only a thing with the new Hydrogen fuel, which by default only exists in the wire frame cryo tanks.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Ivy

[Nergal8617]

21 hours ago, Ivy said:

It's a miracle that this is the only major bug I have with this setup.

Nothing in that list jumps out at me as an obvious cause.  Normally I would offer to replicate your mod list to see if I can track down the problem, however I'm pretty sure my not so great system would throw a fit if I tried it with this mod list.

[Ivy]

6 hours ago, Nergal8617 said:

Nothing in that list jumps out at me as an obvious cause.  Normally I would offer to replicate your mod list to see if I can track down the problem, however I'm pretty sure my not so great system would throw a fit if I tried it with this mod list.

The biggest memory hogs are Outer planets (completely irrelevant) and the visual mods, which could all be omitted for better performance. Thank you anyways!

[Blackline]

11 hours ago, Ivy said:

The biggest memory hogs are Outer planets (completely irrelevant) and the visual mods, which could all be omitted for better performance. Thank you anyways!

Floating stuff usually means a part with mass <= 0kg is involved. You can check a parts mass with KER by hovering over it in the VAB. KER then shows a small tooltip window.

And OPM = kopernicus = anything can happen :-)

[KSPNoob]

Any chance the fuel tank can be made to hold just LF as well?

[Krakatoa]

On 9/20/2017 at 6:14 AM, Pthigrivi said:

Hey guys, Im looking to integrate this mod into an existing save but Im worried about it mucking things up with my active flights. I have half a dozen right now with LV-N's on them that won't wind down anytime soon. My preference would be to either run all the new engines on LF or switch everything over to LH2. The latter would, Im guessing, involve digging into my persistent file and changing the fuel type in each of those tanks (or something?). What would people recommend as the simplest/most reliable course?

@Stratickus @Cynor Did anyone ever put together a working patch to give MultiModeEngine to the LV-N? Decided it'd be best for my current career save to let it be dual-mode (I won't be carrying 2 types of fuel) so I can keep the flights working that are already up but use them as intended going further. Been working on it the last couple days, but I can't figure out how or what exactly I'm supposed to override.

[Pthigrivi]

On 9/26/2017 at 2:48 PM, KSPNoob said:

Any chance the fuel tank can be made to hold just LF as well?

One thing you can do is grab USI core, which includes a series of very similar looking tanks that you can load up with almost anything:

 

[shynung]

On 8/25/2017 at 6:10 AM, Nertea said:

if you turn the power down, the reactor will try to guess what power it needs for running the engine and automatically power up when your throttle up the engine

Reactor still does this even after the engine itself was shut down - i.e. not producing thrust. In this case, I'm using a trimodal nuclear engine (NV-500 Poseidon) as a power generator to run a bunch of ion thrusters. Even if I set the reactor power at 5%, it'll go up when I power up the throttle (controlling ion engines), promptly hit its auto-shutdown temperature, and leaving the ship out cold.

Not sure if intended or not, but there you go.

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, shynung said:

Reactor still does this even after the engine itself was shut down - i.e. not producing thrust. In this case, I'm using a trimodal nuclear engine (NV-500 Poseidon) as a power generator to run a bunch of ion thrusters. Even if I set the reactor power at 5%, it'll go up when I power up the throttle (controlling ion engines), promptly hit its auto-shutdown temperature, and leaving the ship out cold.

Not sure if intended or not, but there you go.

Ah that's something to look into!

[shynung]

@Nertea So I found a line in the NearFutureElectricalNTRs config files that looks like this:

MODULE
	{
		name = FissionReactor
		StartActionName = #LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor_Action_StartActionName
		StopActionName = #LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor_Action_StopActionName
		ToggleActionName = #LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor_Action_ToggleActionName
		
		FollowThrottle = true
		
        //snipped the rest of the code
	}

I'm sure it has something to do with the throttle following function. I think changing it to false means I have to babysit the reactor every burn, or something like that.

[Nertea]

Yes, you can remove that but you will have to babysit as a result. Or you can wait for the next version which will disable this behaviour if the engine is inactive. 

[shynung]

@Nertea Good to know. Waiting for the next version it is, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I go babysit reactor.

Edited October 11, 2017 by shynung

[Nertea]

Kerbal Atomics 0.4.9

•  KSP 1.3.1
•  Dependency update
•  Cleaned up extra NTR patches that were still around from a previous patch
•  LV-N LH2 patch now creates an LF/LH2 multi-mode engine to help with craft transitions
•  CryoTanks 0.4.8
  •  Tanks no longer use up all EC

[Krakatoa]

Thanks for everything, and especially the LV-N patch for this update! Gets movement back in several of my sats and saves me further failure in cfg manipulation