Any way (including mods) to time warp with engines running?

[Hamster123]

Hi all. I am new so sorry if this is the wrong part of the forum.

My question is the following: Using Ion drives (and similar drives from mods), that have high ISP but low thrust, I have a pretty obvious problem. Often it takes sever hours to accelerate to the speed I want to ti fly at. I can not time warp (I can with alt+ . but that is close to useless and also can explode the craft), not even with small tricks like chaning vessels. If I do that and increase time speed, then the ion engine vessel shuts down.

Is there a way around that? Any mod maybe, or something else. I dont mind if the game becomes a little inacure because of that. But its just furstrating without.

Cheers.

[Zhetaan]

There's no way in stock; you have to use mods to get around the automatic thrust-to-zero of on-rails timewarp.  This is a consequence of how KSP handles the physics of timewarp--to get different kinds of timewarp, you need different ways to handle the physics, and that mandates the use of mods.

@NanoExplorer released an ion warp mod called, naturally enough, IonWarp, about eight months ago, but it's an alpha and hasn't been updated since the first release.  I'd post a link to the GitHub repository, but as I am unsure of the license and so forth, I don't want to inadvertently violate any of the community rules by linking to a mod without one.  I'm sure you can find it easily, get the requisite permission, assume the risk, &c.

@HoneyFox made something called Orbit Manipulator that was once recommended for Realism Overhaul, but it's listed as last being compatible with KSP version 0.25.  I have no idea of what, if anything, Realism Overhaul users are using right now for realistic ion engines; I mention this mod anyway because they're the group most likely both to have this same issue and to do something about it.  Check the Realism Overhaul thread for more information.

@mrsolarsail has two works-in-progress called SolarSailNavigator, and PersistentThrust.  They run in KSP version 1.0.5, but they are in-development alphas.  I can't comment on how well these work right now, but they seem to be your best bet.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Zhetaan

[Hamster123]

First of all thanks for the answer.

I tried the solar sails, it's in the interstellar mods, but they do not accelerate when you time warp. They do accelerate your ship even when your thrust is at 0, if you have the sails out, but as soon as you increase time speed, they seemingly do not accelerate anymore.

Maybe I have not figured it out yet... Really hope that the devs will do something about it, since waiting for hours is not that much fun :/.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would welcome them too.

Cheers.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, Hamster123 said:

First of all thanks for the answer.

I tried the solar sails, it's in the interstellar mods, but they do not accelerate when you time warp. They do accelerate your ship even when your thrust is at 0, if you have the sails out, but as soon as you increase time speed, they seemingly do not accelerate anymore.

Maybe I have not figured it out yet... Really hope that the devs will do something about it, since waiting for hours is not that much fun :/.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would welcome them too.

Cheers.

By the way, running at physics warp x4 should not be making your ship explode if you're running with ions.  Can you post a screenshot?  An ion-powered ship ought to be able to run at max physics warp just fine; there's not enough acceleration to make anything weird happen.  The worst you might see would be some jittering due to SAS issues, but that's easily solved by turning off most of your reaction wheels during the burn.

Yes, even at 4x the burn takes forever, but it's a heckuva lot better than 1x!

[Hamster123]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

By the way, running at physics warp x4 should not be making your ship explode if you're running with ions.  Can you post a screenshot?  An ion-powered ship ought to be able to run at max physics warp just fine; there's not enough acceleration to make anything weird happen.  The worst you might see would be some jittering due to SAS issues, but that's easily solved by turning off most of your reaction wheels during the burn.

Yes, even at 4x the burn takes forever, but it's a heckuva lot better than 1x!

Fair enough x4 is better then x1 indeed its 4 times better, but kinda lacking compared to x100000. Also, not sure if it makes ion engines explode, but it certainly makes a lot of ships explode :).

Anyway, cheers.

[ineon]

Not a direct answer to your question, but...

I always set up a maneuver node when using Ion Engines and get MechJeb to execute it. Depending on how long the burn is, I might go off and do something else while it is going.

[Snark]

4 hours ago, Hamster123 said:

Also, not sure if it makes ion engines explode, but it certainly makes a lot of ships explode

Yes, but ion engines are one case where it definitely doesn't.

The explosions at 4x are because the effects of forces get magnified, and the physics model can't keep up with them.  That doesn't happen with ion engines, because the thrust is so gentle that even magnifying it 4x it's still really low.

So if you've got a 2-hour burn to do, you can safely crank it up to 4x and go take a nap for half an hour.

[AlphaMensae]

6 hours ago, ineon said:

Not a direct answer to your question, but...

I always set up a maneuver node when using Ion Engines and get MechJeb to execute it. Depending on how long the burn is, I might go off and do something else while it is going.

That's all you really can do.  Scott Manley did that (well, I don't think he used MJ) during those hours-long burns in the later episodes of Interstellar Quest, and I did it as well with a mere 5 minute game time burn but due to heavy slowdown and lag lasted over 15 minutes in real time  I let MJ handle it and did something else away from the computer.

[Nightside]

8 hours ago, Snark said:

Yes, but ion engines are one case where it definitely doesn't.

The explosions at 4x are because the effects of forces get magnified, and the physics model can't keep up with them.  That doesn't happen with ion engines, because the thrust is so gentle that even magnifying it 4x it's still really low.

So if you've got a 2-hour burn to do, you can safely crank it up to 4x and go take a nap for half an hour.

Wait a second, how are you doing physics warp in space? It always switches to Time Warp for me. Am I missing something, or is that a mod feature?

[Snark]

14 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Wait a second, how are you doing physics warp in space? It always switches to Time Warp for me. Am I missing something, or is that a mod feature?

Ah yes.  One of those many, many little stock KSP features that you can play the game for months without discovering, like absolute-snap for the editor rotate widget, or the fact that you can drag maneuver nodes back and forth along an orbital path to adjust the node time, or proportional RCS thrust in fine-control mode.

Just hold down the ALT key when you press "." and it'll put you in physics warp. 

So, how long have you been playing?  I'm trying to remember how long I was playing before I discovered this.  I think it was at least six months... might have been eight.  Quite a forehead-smacking moment for me...

Edited February 18, 2016 by Snark

[Nightside]

WOW! I've played for a year and never figured that out! I'm suddenly excited to plot some long burns. I've never really bothered with the ion engine because it seemed so tedious to use. 

Thanks. With that bit of knowledge I want to try the Better Time Warp mod, I believe that offers higher physics warp levels.