[WIP] Coatl Aerospace ProbesPlus Dev Thread [Beta] 10/19/2020 (1.8-1.10)

[KerBlitz Kerman]

A manned one with the cassini core is in the works but aesthetically is... Strange. But has a lot of features!

It's even NASA and Stephen Baxter proof courtesy of the heatshield included.

*glares at NASA and Stephen Baxter*

Sadly Werner von Kerman had to use a few octo struts to lift up the dish so Jeb would fit.

[captainradish]

I just wanted to pop on to tell you you have done a stellar job so far! There are very few people who develop stock-like probe packs and this one is above and beyond anything I've seen before. Very well done!

The only recommendation I would have is to put the "beginner" probe parts sliiiiighly closer to the beginning. I play "realistically" which means I do a LOT of unmanned missions and there are a definite lack of starting probe cores.

 

EDIT: I just wanted to mention that if you have this one you don't really need any other. The lack of a tier-0 probe core is the packs only shortcoming as far as I can tell right now.

Edited September 29, 2017 by captainradish

[akron]

1 hour ago, captainradish said:

I just wanted to pop on to tell you you have done a stellar job so far! There are very few people who develop stock-like probe packs and this one is above and beyond anything I've seen before. Very well done!

The only recommendation I would have is to put the "beginner" probe parts sliiiiighly closer to the beginning. I play "realistically" which means I do a LOT of unmanned missions and there are a definite lack of starting probe cores.

Thank you! So, @CobaltWolf and I try to not overlap our parts from both of our mods too much, and he's actually got the early probe stuff covered. His BDB mod has early Pioneer, Ranger, Explorer, and some Russian probes and I pick up after that historically with Surveyor and Pioneer 10 forward. I don't know if there are other interesting early probes not covered in BDB or other popular mods that I can drop in. I too play career mode realistically, but even then I zoom past those starting nodes and into the more flexible Quetzal (Pioneer) and stock OKTO cores which make up the bulk of my Comm and early-mid exploration designs.

Got any suggestions?

EDIT: By the way, I try to adjust when my parts unlock a bit to where you unlock the BDB equivalent of the real rocket that launched that mission. That's why the Surveyor and Pioneer are a little bit back, you need Atlas and Centaur parts first. Then you need Titan III for Voyager and others

Edited September 29, 2017 by akron

[captainradish]

19 hours ago, akron said:

Thank you! So, @CobaltWolf and I try to not overlap our parts from both of our mods too much, and he's actually got the early probe stuff covered. His BDB mod has early Pioneer, Ranger, Explorer, and some Russian probes and I pick up after that historically with Surveyor and Pioneer 10 forward. I don't know if there are other interesting early probes not covered in BDB or other popular mods that I can drop in. I too play career mode realistically, but even then I zoom past those starting nodes and into the more flexible Quetzal (Pioneer) and stock OKTO cores which make up the bulk of my Comm and early-mid exploration designs.

Got any suggestions?

EDIT: By the way, I try to adjust when my parts unlock a bit to where you unlock the BDB equivalent of the real rocket that launched that mission. That's why the Surveyor and Pioneer are a little bit back, you need Atlas and Centaur parts first. Then you need Titan III for Voyager and others

OK, I didn't realize this was a companion to CobaltWolf's stuff. He does cover early probes well, but I honestly don't tend to play with his (otherwise excellent, BTW) pack as I tend to overuse it as it were. Honestly I don't really have any good suggestions as probes are more-or-less covered if the Sputnik probe core is moved back to start.

[akron]

7 hours ago, captainradish said:

OK, I didn't realize this was a companion to CobaltWolf's stuff. He does cover early probes well, but I honestly don't tend to play with his (otherwise excellent, BTW) pack as I tend to overuse it as it were. Honestly I don't really have any good suggestions as probes are more-or-less covered if the Sputnik probe core is moved back to start.

Well BDB is not a companion requirement but it does all the launch vehicles you would need for RL replicas in-game. I won't really offer many propulsion options beyond Upper Stages. I tell you what, since not everyone runs with that mod, I will look into adding some early US and Russian stuff to my mod in the earlier tiers. Probably looking at Ranger/Mariner or maybe Lunar Orbiter. On the Russian side, maybe Luna 3? The later Luna missions were already planned since I need the parts for Lunokhod but they're not coming soon as the rover stuff is slated for later on.

It's hard to squeeze in historical progression in the stock tech tree without jamming a ton of parts in one node. That's why I try to spread parts out in the tree. It's very easy to get to mid-tree where most of my part variety is at. With all the parts I have planned, you'll have even more variety coming  right around T3-T4. The "golden" age of space travel brought a lot more variety in parts. Pretty my anything after the Mariner "Mk2" buses used in Pioneer, Voyager, Magellan, Galileo, even Viking and Cassini. Russians had their "Mars" line of probes which none were really successful but do offer some more parts I could work into the Vorona parts I already have in-game.

Sorry, rambling.

Cassini work is still ongoing. Cobaltwolf helped get a head start on Huygens so that's probably going to be finished pretty soon. The main Fuel Tank part is where I'm stuck right now on the Cassini work. Whenever I got frustrated I moved on to something else. STEREO, for some reason since it was easier, so that's done. You guys will thus have a 3rd collection of new parts. This one I called "CA-Q20-M Xihe"

I also experimented with a new way of setting up solar panels. These are not reflections, just a specular trick, thoughts?

And retrofitted into my old MAVEN panels:

 

~cheers

[notJebKerman]

7 minutes ago, akron said:

Well BDB is not a companion requirement but it does all the launch vehicles you would need for RL replicas in-game. I won't really offer many propulsion options beyond Upper Stages. I tell you what, since not everyone runs with that mod, I will look into adding some early US and Russian stuff to my mod in the earlier tiers. Probably looking at Ranger/Mariner or maybe Lunar Orbiter. On the Russian side, maybe Luna 3? The later Luna missions were already planned since I need the parts for Lunokhod but they're not coming soon as the rover stuff is slated for later on.

It's hard to squeeze in historical progression in the stock tech tree without jamming a ton of parts in one node. That's why I try to spread parts out in the tree. It's very easy to get to mid-tree where most of my part variety is at. With all the parts I have planned, you'll have even more variety coming  right around T3-T4. The "golden" age of space travel brought a lot more variety in parts. Pretty my anything after the Mariner "Mk2" buses used in Pioneer, Voyager, Magellan, Galileo, even Viking and Cassini. Russians had their "Mars" line of probes which none were really successful but do offer some more parts I could work into the Vorona parts I already have in-game.

Sorry, rambling.

Cassini work is still ongoing. Cobaltwolf helped get a head start on Huygens so that's probably going to be finished pretty soon. The main Fuel Tank part is where I'm stuck right now on the Cassini work. Whenever I got frustrated I moved on to something else. STEREO, for some reason since it was easier, so that's done. You guys will thus have a 3rd collection of new parts. This one I called "CA-Q20-M Xihe"

I also experimented with a new way of setting up solar panels. These are not reflections, just a specular trick, thoughts?

And retrofitted into my old MAVEN panels:

~cheers

So far, it looks great

[CobaltWolf]

53 minutes ago, akron said:

Well BDB is not a companion requirement but it does all the launch vehicles you would need for RL replicas in-game. I won't really offer many propulsion options beyond Upper Stages. I tell you what, since not everyone runs with that mod, I will look into adding some early US and Russian stuff to my mod in the earlier tiers. Probably looking at Ranger/Mariner or maybe Lunar Orbiter. On the Russian side, maybe Luna 3? The later Luna missions were already planned since I need the parts for Lunokhod but they're not coming soon as the rover stuff is slated for later on.

Well, Mariner/Ranger and Lunar Orbiter are fairly covered by BDB ( @captainradish just delete all the parts folders save Antennas, Science, ProbesExpansion, and Explorer) and I actually have Luna 3 modeled (which, IMO makes sense to include in BDB and not Coatl since I already have cameras as part of my lineup)... I was really into all the early probe stuff for a while... I also have Pioneer 6 parts I need to finish. @akron, I was just talking to @Beale about this, but there are A LOT of really great Russian parts you can mine. Peruse some of the designs for their spacecraft/satellites lower down on this list, I think every single one of their satellites have a super unique look to them... http://russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft.html

[akron]

@captainradish@CobaltWolf Wait, I'm overthinking it. I'll add the Mariner bus anyway because I have Viking on my to-do, plus I already did the solar panels inspired by it. Essentially just an early tech 8-sided bus because the smallest I have so far is the Voyager bus. So I can just add an earlier version of Mariner to go on an earlier tier.

However, I'm not really looking to do the "early flight" Tier 0 missions like the explorer, Pioneer 1-9, or the Sputniks. BDB and other mods cover that pretty well, plus you can do sounding rockets for that early bit of science. In KSP you fly right past that pretty quickly to the tier 2-3 where my Surveyor buses come in (orbital surveyor is coming in this next release)

Thanks for the link, I'll see what else can be low hanging fruit from there. What I don't want to do is the first gen of big Russian probes. They're unique but hard to use in KSP just from a parts perspective which is why I jumped to the 2nd gen with Venera 9+. I have rarely seen people use my Venera as it is

[captainradish]

I ended up just playing with Bluedog anyway, so probes are covered now.

[akron]

4 hours ago, captainradish said:

I ended up just playing with Bluedog anyway, so probes are covered now.

Well, there you go. Like Cobalt said, you can always trim it down if you want. I'll eventually have the Mariner parts in when I'm ready for Viking

 

[captainradish]

I've noticed (and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not) but you're missing the science generating part to the ScanSat compatibility. I updated the modmanager config file to correct this:

@PART[ca_HOLA]:FOR[CoatlAerospace]:NEEDS[SCANsat]
{
	!MODULE[ModuleAnimateGeneric]{}
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANsat
		sensorType = 1   //2^0
		fov = 5
		min_alt = 5000
		max_alt = 500000
		best_alt = 5000
		scanName = Laser Altimeter Scan
		animationName = deploy
		RESOURCE
			{
				name = ElectricCharge
				rate = 0.1
			}
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANexperiment
		experimentType = SCANsatAltimetryLoRes
	}
}

@PART[ca_H2RS]:FOR[CoatlAerospace]:NEEDS[SCANsat]
{
	!MODULE[ModuleAnimateGeneric]{}
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANsat
		sensorType = 2  //2^1
		fov = 2
		min_alt = 5000
		max_alt = 800000
		best_alt = 750000
		scanName = High-Res Radar Scan
		animationName = deploy
		RESOURCE
			{
				name = ElectricCharge
				rate = 1.5
			}
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANexperiment
		experimentType = SCANsatAltimetryHiRes
	}
}

//TRIXIE, based on New Horizons
@PART[ca_TRIXIE]:FOR[CoatlAerospace]:NEEDS[SCANsat]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANsat
		sensorType = 24  //2^3 + 2^4
		fov = 4
		min_alt = 5000
		max_alt = 500000
		best_alt = 250000
		scanName = Multispectral Scan
		animationName = deploy
		RESOURCE
			{
				name = ElectricCharge
				rate = 1
			}
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANexperiment
		experimentType = SCANsatBiomeAnomaly
	}
}

//Vorona SAR
@PART[ca_vor_sar]:FOR[CoatlAerospace]:NEEDS[SCANsat]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = SCANsat
		sensorType = 2  //2^1
		fov = 2
		min_alt = 5000
		max_alt = 800000
		best_alt = 750000
		scanName = SAR Scan
		animationName = sar_deploy
		RESOURCE
			{
				name = ElectricCharge
				rate = 1.6
			}
	}
		MODULE
	{
		name = SCANexperiment
		experimentType = SCANsatAltimetryHiRes
	}
}

 

[akron]

4 hours ago, captainradish said:

I've noticed (and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not) but you're missing the science generating part to the ScanSat compatibility. I updated the modmanager config file to correct this:

This has been fixed already in the GitHub repo, but thank you for bringing it up!

[Akira_R]

Has any one made an up to date Remote Tech config for these parts? It seams that many of the newer probe parts are lacking RT integration.

I ask cuz I'm lazy and if someone has already done the cfg work then I don't need to. If not I can probably get one together sometime next week.

[akron]

34 minutes ago, Akira_R said:

Has any one made an up to date Remote Tech config for these parts? It seams that many of the newer probe parts are lacking RT integration.

I ask cuz I'm lazy and if someone has already done the cfg work then I don't need to. If not I can probably get one together sometime next week.

I don't think anyone has recently offered to work on these. I appreciate it if you can update the configs. I will try and take a crack at it but I'm not a RT user

[Akira_R]

16 minutes ago, akron said:

I don't think anyone has recently offered to work on these. I appreciate it if you can update the configs. I will try and take a crack at it but I'm not a RT user

No worries, I'll start on them this coming week and hopefully I can get something done by next weekend, but no promises as I have a calc and a physics exam coming up(and TWW2 to play), but I will get 'em done at some point as i need it for my career game. Thanks for the awesome mod!

Edited October 1, 2017 by Akira_R

[Jhorriga]

Game crashes when the loading screen reaches parts

[CobaltWolf]

10 minutes ago, Jhorriga said:

Game crashes when the loading screen reaches parts

don't mix and match plugins for 1.2.2 in a 1.3 game

[Jhorriga]

waddya mean

[akron]

If you have any issues please check this FAQ

[Jhorriga]

KK thanks

[Jhorriga]

error log:

[Huge error log snipped by moderator]

output log:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7qvv20f6mxhd2eh/output_logmoola.txt?dl=0

Edited October 4, 2017 by Snark
Snipped big error log from post

[Snark]

40 minutes ago, Jhorriga said:

error log:

Hi @Jhorriga, just a note that I've snipped the error log from your post.  Please be careful not to post giant log files to the forum-- aside from readability issues of having your log file occupy many many screens' worth of space, it can also cause problems for folks, especially those on mobile browsers.

I see that you posted your output log to a 3rd-party site, so thank you for that-- it was exactly the right thingt to do.  But the error log was also pretty big; could you please do that same thing for the error log as well, instead of posting it here in-line?  Thanks.

[Aelfhe1m]

1 hour ago, Jhorriga said:

error log:

That log shows that you're running the 32 bit version of KSP and ran out of memory. When using mods it's almost essential to run the 64 bit version of KSP.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Aelfhe1m
removed unnecessary comment - should have read more carefully before posting

[Jhorriga]

Ok. Thanks!

Dangit. It still crashes when I run on 64 bit.

[Aelfhe1m]

 

Ok. Thanks!

Dangit. It still crashes when I run on 64 bit.

You've got several out-of-date versions of mods. Make sure you install the most recent 1.3 versions. From a quick look you need to update: FireSpitter, B9AnimationModules, DMModuleScienceAnimateGeneric, USI Tools, Planetshine, TweakScale - there may be others I missed.

You've also got two versions of KerbalJointReinforcement listed. Remove the older one.