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

[Nertea]

46 minutes ago, trias702 said:

1) When looking at the radiator(s) to cool the Emancipator, should I be looking at the Core Heat xFer stat or Max Cooling stat of the radiator to apply against the hypothetical 11.25 MW (at 1% idle)? I know that in NFE, I only care about the Core Heat xFer stat when cooling reactors, but just want to confirm that it's the same for engines too.

Still core heat xfer. Basically anything that uses core heat (has a core heat module) should be looked at for core heat xfer, the only things that care about Max Cooling are "regular" engine heat and anything related to solar/atmospheric heating.

48 minutes ago, trias702 said:

2) When placing radiators on reactors in NFE for cooling, I can attach the radiators directly onto the reactor. However, I cannot attach radiators to the Emancipator engine, it won't let me. Therefore, where should I place the radiators for optimum cooling? Should it be on the next closest part connected to the Emancipator, or does proximity not matter, and I can place the radiators anywhere on my ship and they will cool the Emancipator just fine?

Depends on the radiator. Everything from HeatControl is vessel-wide, but you need to watch out for the stock radiators. The non-deployable ones will only cool up to 1 or 2 parts away. 

[AmpCat]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

Yeah it looks like the two 5m tanks are improperly costed, the 10m is also off, but only by a few thousand funds. For the second one it took me quite a while to understand what you meant, but just to confirm, you mean that the height of the attach node in the Compact variant is too low, it should be the "higher" node that is the same for the Basic variants.

Sorry it wasn't more clear. Yes, attaching things radially puts them at a 2.5m radius, or inside the tank. Since it's a 3.75m tank, should probably attach at the surface, or a radius of 3.75m. At least, that's what I was trying to say. I suppose the simpler explanation would be 'surface attachment points are inside the tank'  

[Nertea]

11 minutes ago, AmpCat said:

Sorry it wasn't more clear. Yes, attaching things radially puts them at a 2.5m radius, or inside the tank. Since it's a 3.75m tank, should probably attach at the surface, or a radius of 3.75m. At least, that's what I was trying to say. I suppose the simpler explanation would be 'surface attachment points are inside the tank'  

Now I'm unclear again! I may have fixed a different bug then.

[AmpCat]

3 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Now I'm unclear again! I may have fixed a different bug then.

Need pics?

[Nertea]

Yes if you could.

[AmpCat]

3.75m tank, surface attaching engines. They attach properly to the surface by default in the two appearances, but not in the compact versions.

I love the isohedral look by the way. The foil....... well, that yellow color makes me think it's full of pee. Doesn't seem gold enough.  

Edited July 11, 2017 by AmpCat

[Nertea]

Ahhh. Alright, I see where the problem is...

[trias702]

14 hours ago, Nertea said:

Still core heat xfer. Basically anything that uses core heat (has a core heat module) should be looked at for core heat xfer, the only things that care about Max Cooling are "regular" engine heat and anything related to solar/atmospheric heating.

Awesome, thank you!

One quick question, as I'm still somewhat new to the game: in terms of Max Cooling above, you mention that it only matters for "regular" engine heat. What do you mean by "regular" here? Does that mean any engine which doesn't have an NFE interface, or just engines from the stock game? And why does Max Cooling matter for these "regular" engines? I apologise if this is a dumb question, but are stock engines able to overheat? I've never seen this happen in any of my games.

Edit: Sorry, forgot to also ask, you mention that the Emancipator generates 1,125 MW of heat. However, looking in the NFE config file, there is also mention of HeatGeneration = 56250000. What is the difference between these two numbers?

Edited July 12, 2017 by trias702

[Nertea]

8 hours ago, trias702 said:

One quick question, as I'm still somewhat new to the game: in terms of Max Cooling above, you mention that it only matters for "regular" engine heat. What do you mean by "regular" here? Does that mean any engine which doesn't have an NFE interface, or just engines from the stock game? And why does Max Cooling matter for these "regular" engines? I apologise if this is a dumb question, but are stock engines able to overheat? I've never seen this happen in any of my games.

Stock engines can overheat, they do generate it but you're unlikely to see this much. Squad introduced the mechanic, particularly for the LV-N, then nerfed it into oblivion a few patches later. 

You can think of MaxCooling as the equivalent of CoreHeatXfer but for regular parts. Essentially there are up to 3 thermal buckets on a part, Core, Internal and Skin. CoreHeatXfer removes heat form Core (reactors, converters, harvesters only), MaxCooling removes heat from Internal (typically only generated by engines but also 'leaks' out from Core). 

8 hours ago, trias702 said:

Edit: Sorry, forgot to also ask, you mention that the Emancipator generates 1,125 MW of heat. However, looking in the NFE config file, there is also mention of HeatGeneration = 56250000. What is the difference between these two numbers?

For some asinine reason the configs for heat generation are in a mix of kW and in a special (kW*50) unit... so in some cases the config values need to be divided by 50 to get the ingame values. 

[tan620]

Is there any way to make the NFE Compatibility patch work for other mods atomic engines? Would it be as simple as just copying the info from the patch config into other mods' parts configs?

Edited July 12, 2017 by tan620

[Nertea]

Kerbal Atomics 0.4.6

I spent some time working on the KA/NFE integration here. It seems to be an improvement, but obviously I don't have time to do a huge amount of tests. Essentially you should see more stability in timewarp, as radiators can now properly cool the engine's Internal heat store, which will then no longer conduct into adjacent parts and explode them. Additionally, it will be a bit harder to run your reactor into the ground because the cooling provided by exhaust now takes longer to stop working after you shut down the engine.

Additionally there are a bunch of fixes to CryoTanks

•  NFE integration patch upgrades
  •  Eel now correctly includes a passive radiator in NFE mode
  •  Fixed several missing part fields in configs (improves behaviour)
  •  Reworked exhaust cooling to not use radiator system, so normal radiators can cool engine parts (reduces explosions when entering timewarp after using an engine)
  •  Exhaust cooling is now more forgiving and takes ~10s to taper off after engine shutdown
  •  Reduced core -> part energy transfer to 0.1% from between 10-1% (reduces explosions in timewarp)
•  CryoTanks 0.4.5
  •  Added Russian translation from vladmir_v
  •  Fixed a typo in the version file
  •  Fixed 5m tanks throwing a B9PartSwitch warning on placement in the VAB
  •  Fixed 3.75m tanks having collider issues
  •  Adjusted the position of the nodes for the compact variants of 3.75m tanks
  •  Fixed low cost of 5m hydrogen tanks
  •  Fixed slightly off cost of 10m hydrogen tank

[trias702]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

Stock engines can overheat, they do generate it but you're unlikely to see this much. Squad introduced the mechanic, particularly for the LV-N, then nerfed it into oblivion a few patches later. 

You can think of MaxCooling as the equivalent of CoreHeatXfer but for regular parts. Essentially there are up to 3 thermal buckets on a part, Core, Internal and Skin. CoreHeatXfer removes heat form Core (reactors, converters, harvesters only), MaxCooling removes heat from Internal (typically only generated by engines but also 'leaks' out from Core). 

Thank you very much for the help.

One other question which I forgot to ask: in the NFE control panel, there is a little gear/sprocket button immediately to the right of the ON radio button. I think this sprocket button is called Customise Reactor maybe? Anyway, when you push that button, a little dialog box pops up with several large buttons to press, and each button is a radiation symbol (radura) surround by some kind of geometric shape. The first one is a radura with a circle around it, the next is a radura with a square, etc, etc. What do all of these selections do? There are several of them, at least ten, and each NFE reactor/engine has them all, however, I can find no documentation on what they actually do. The default appears to be a radura with a circle around it.

[Nertea]

6 minutes ago, trias702 said:

Thank you very much for the help.

One other question which I forgot to ask: in the NFE control panel, there is a little gear/sprocket button immediately to the right of the ON radio button. I think this sprocket button is called Customise Reactor maybe? Anyway, when you push that button, a little dialog box pops up with several large buttons to press, and each button is a radiation symbol (radura) surround by some kind of geometric shape. The first one is a radura with a circle around it, the next is a radura with a square, etc, etc. What do all of these selections do? There are several of them, at least ten, and each NFE reactor/engine has them all, however, I can find no documentation on what they actually do. The default appears to be a radura with a circle around it.

Just an icon change to let you easily mark your engines in the control panel You can also rename them there (eg 'engine reactor', 'cryogenics reactor' etc) 

[trias702]

5 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Just an icon change to let you easily mark your engines in the control panel You can also rename them there (eg 'engine reactor', 'cryogenics reactor' etc) 

Ah, that's very handy, cool, thank you.

On 11/07/2017 at 7:44 PM, Nertea said:

Depends on the radiator. Everything from HeatControl is vessel-wide, but you need to watch out for the stock radiators. The non-deployable ones will only cool up to 1 or 2 parts away.

So just to confirm: all of the radiators in HeatControl, I can place them anywhere on my vessel, and they will still cool the Emancipator engine (along with any other parts which require Core xFer cooling)?

And for stock radiators, the deployable ones can also be placed anywhere on the vessel and they will cool the Emancipator engine (so they function like the HeatControl ones)? However, the stock non-deployable radiators will only cool parts 1-2 parts away from them?

Just want to clarify all this as there are so many different variations, just want to make sure I understand them all. (it's all so confusing for a new player)

[Nertea]

Just now, trias702 said:

Ah, that's very handy, cool, thank you.

So just to confirm: all of the radiators in HeatControl, I can place them anywhere on my vessel, and they will still cool the Emancipator engine (along with any other parts which require Core xFer cooling)?

And for stock radiators, the deployable ones can also be placed anywhere on the vessel and they will cool the Emancipator engine (so they function like the HeatControl ones)? However, the stock non-deployable radiators will only cool parts 1-2 parts away from them?

Just want to clarify all this as there are so many different variations, just want to make sure I understand them all. (it's all so confusing for a new player)

Yes you have all of that right! The stock thermal system is very confusing and quite stupid.

[trias702]

16 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Yes you have all of that right! The stock thermal system is very confusing and quite stupid.

Awesome, thanks!

One last question for tonight (I promise!): I'm unfortunately still stuck on KSP 1.22 as I'm waiting for three key mods to update (FAR, OPM, and OPMVO). I know that Kerbal Atomics and NFE have progressed quite a bit since the last 1.22 release, and I'm super keen to try out the latest and greatest. I noticed that for NFE, you have the source code on your github. Is it allowed to download the latest source and compile it against KSP 1.22 (just for my personal use) such that I can then play with all of the latest parts? Would this even be possible, or does the latest NFE source make function calls and bind to methods/properties which are only available in KSP 1.3, such that it would never even compile against 1.22 (the new localisation system notwithstanding)?

[Nertea]

It would compile, but I can't say for sure that it would work. You'd have to strip out all the Localizer.Format calls and replace them with String.Format calls, and reconstruct the strings from the localization file, at the very least, to get any kind of thing working.

[The-Doctor]

@Esquire42 NFT thrusters take hours and tons of fuel, I was thinking of looking at Orion nuclear pulse. Also what do you mean by a supply chain for obital construction? Also have you gone interstellar? Also what do you mean by drone construction of a supply line to build ships? What do you mean by long range relays? LOL

 

My goal, is to build a massive mothership with the help of the community here and in the FB group. The mission is to colonize all the habitable worlds in RSS Constellations, which will take hundreds if not thousand of years to fly between. The manufactures for each vessel used on the mothership will form the New Colonial Alliance, which is the group that's sending the mission. It's called the Icarus Initiative. I may even turn it into a youtube series 

That was previously on the clip board. This mod looks amazing, the fuel tanks remind me of ISV Venture Star. I feel to add in

[trias702]

17 hours ago, Nertea said:

It would compile, but I can't say for sure that it would work. You'd have to strip out all the Localizer.Format calls and replace them with String.Format calls, and reconstruct the strings from the localization file, at the very least, to get any kind of thing working.

Hmm, ok, might not be worth doing then. What about backporting just the Kerbal Atomics parts files themselves, without any of the NFE stuff? Assuming you sorted out the localisation stuff, would the parts files of KA 1.3 work in 1.2.2 or are there keywords used in the .cfg files which only KSP 1.3 would recognise? Having a quick look at ntr-sc-25-1.cfg (between KSP 1.3 vs KSP 1.2.2), I notice that 1.3 uses the following keywords which I can't find in 1.2.2:

primaryEngineModeDisplayName

secondaryEngineModeDisplayName

dependOnThrottle

preferMultiMode

Are those keywords only recognised by 1.3 and thus would not work if backported to 1.2.2?

[Nertea]

Keywords that are not recognized by 1.2 should be ignored by the loader and not used. 

[trias702]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

Keywords that are not recognized by 1.2 should be ignored by the loader and not used. 

That makes sense, but what about if a part file contains critical keywords for the correct operation of that part, but those keywords are KSP 1.3 only, wouldn't that cause a big problem if one tries to backport? Are any of those keywords I typed in my last message considered such critical, 1.3-only keywords?

[Nertea]

Uh, probably not. Test it, see what happens. 

Edited July 13, 2017 by Nertea

[trias702]

34 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Uh, probably not. Test it, see what happens. 

So I managed to backport Kerbal Atomics, NFE, CryoTanks, DynamicBatteryStorage, and HeatControl. I recompiled the C# code where I needed to. It all works ok if I load into a SandBox save and assemble a new craft in VAB, then test it.

However, if I load up a Career save, go to the VAB, and try loading a saved ship which had 150+ parts (including many from Kerbal Atomics, NFE, CryoTanks, etc), then the ship doesn't load, it fails with the VAB going super slow FPS-wise. If I immediately exit, I can see in the log that when I tried to load the ship, a lot of part modules don't match prefab indices (not sure what this means). Then when Interstellar Fuel Switch tries to load, it throws an exception, and then there are about 100k exceptions from FAR.

I think if I want to keep the backported stuff, I basically have to rebuild all of my ships from scratch in VAB. Luckily I have no ships out in space on active missions.

[Nertea]

Well, glad it mostly worked out for you, at least :).

[Rodger]

Looks like some of the cryo ZBO tanks are still very expensive for part unlock, 125,000 funds each for the 1.25/2.5/3.75m in-line tanks, more than the radials or the 5m parts.

And just had a crazy idea. What about a 'part upgrade' you buy before researching the tanks which is quite expensive, which reduces the unlock cost of the tanks? To simulate researching the general technology required for ZBO tanks, then just different sizes of the tanks not costing as much to make? Not as useful for playing without part-unlock costs though, unless it makes the part-use cost cheaper too, or somehow detect that difficulty setting.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Rodger