[1.11.x] Endurance (from Interstellar) Continued... (V1.13) 20th Feb 2021

[Quoniam Kerman]

If it works with KIS...

[COL.R.Neville]

on the ranger the back hatch is blocked when you use the ranger docking port. 

it seems that the back hatch is also a docking port by itself? so the ranger docking port isnt needed?

i tried docking it without the port but i dont know what size the "built in" docking port is.  

 

[JadeOfMaar]

17 hours ago, COL.R.Neville said:

it seems that the back hatch is also a docking port by itself? so the ranger docking port isnt needed?

That's correct. So the Ranger docking port exists to be used on Endurance while sharing the look of (so it looks made for/to match with) Ranger's built-in hatch. According to their part configs they are compatible with the stock 1.25m Clamp-O-Tron (which I would expect).

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by JadeOfMaar

[COL.R.Neville]

11 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

That's correct. So the Ranger docking port exists to be used on Endurance while sharing the look of (so it looks made for/to match with) Ranger's built-in hatch. According to their part configs they are compatible with the stock 1.25m Clamp-O-Tron (which I would expect).

 

okay i got it going by using the ranger docking port on the station. thanks. 

Edited March 24, 2020 by COL.R.Neville

[WannaBee]

pretty nice the endurance gets a update .thanks for maintaining the mod it is very difficult to use right now

[Selphadur]

Any idea how to increase number of engine ignitions using Kerbalism? 
Ranger and Viper are barely usable with 1 engine ignition (2 if you pay extra for high quality engine). 

[Keithv708]

No idea how but I do not know way not

[L0NE_PH4NT0M]

@JadeOfMaar Any updates on your reconfig project for this mod? Would love to see the mod in a whole new light soon.

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, L0NE_PH4NT0M said:

@JadeOfMaar Any updates on your reconfig project for this mod? Would love to see the mod in a whole new light soon.

Not recently (since I published it, if you didn't know).

As for Endurance itself, there is a thing or two I can submit to it directly for JPLRepo to publish:

• Fix for that USI config.
• Move the med bay part that Reconfig adds, from Reconfig into this mod. (My "Reconfig" mods try to not add parts.)

[JadeOfMaar]

On 6/30/2020 at 9:34 AM, Selphadur said:

Any idea how to increase number of engine ignitions using Kerbalism? 
Ranger and Viper are barely usable with 1 engine ignition (2 if you pay extra for high quality engine). 

The spoiler should help you quite a bit. I've setup comforts and science storage too but those can wait.

Spoiler

@PART[ENenduranceEngine|ENrangerBody|ENrangerEngine|ENlanderBody|ENlanderVTOL|ENminiRanger]:AFTER[KerbalismDefault]
{
	@MODULE[Reliability]:HAS[#type[ModuleEngines*]]
	{
		@rated_operation_duration = 1800
		@rated_ignitions = 120
	}
}

 

 

[Selphadur]

7 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The spoiler should help you quite a bit. I've setup comforts and science storage too but those can wait.

  Hide contents

@PART[ENenduranceEngine|ENrangerBody|ENrangerEngine|ENlanderBody|ENlanderVTOL|ENminiRanger]:AFTER[KerbalismDefault]
{
	@MODULE[Reliability]:HAS[#type[ModuleEngines*]]
	{
		@rated_operation_duration = 1800
		@rated_ignitions = 120
	}
}

 

 

Niiice! Thank you! 

[JadeOfMaar]

Fixed Kerbalism engine ignitions and burn time:

Ignition count might be too high for standard quality. I don't know for sure. I study Kerbalism but I don't play it.

Fixed Kerbalism weak science storage:

Edited July 3, 2020 by JadeOfMaar

[JadeOfMaar]

The Lander VTOL plume problem -was- fixable. Ooooooh.

[EdySpaghetti]

Are there any plans to add the Rangers' ventral docking ports? I want to launch two Rangers at once but I can't do it without making a funky, unstable, construct to do so.

[JadeOfMaar]

@EdySpaghetti I think you mean the Lander (the big craft in my screenshot above) which I can do and will make it very convenient to have one decouple from Endurance. The Ranger can't have a ventral docking port because it has a built-in VTOL engine in its center. Those two features can't coexist like that.

I could weld a docking port to the Lander's underside but only if I can pull off some trickery to offset just about everything about the Lander as a part so that visibly nothing seems to have moved and the control points (forward and down) are fixed on the origin point of the part (technical stuff, sorry). And that will mess with existing craft files (but it's worth it, I think).

[JadeOfMaar]

I think @JPLRepo himself will rather enjoy this one. TAC LS options from here to there (powered by B9 Part Switch).

Practically all parts have fuel selection (with large volume) and LS selections (with small volume) separate from each other. I will try to fix this so that some parts can have all options under one selection. It ended up this way since the two selections use very different scaling calculations.

The other LS mods (USI, Kerbalism, Snacks) are provided for, under B9 Part Switch. But their tankage scaling will have to wait to be decided by post-release user feedback.

Side note: the WBI OmniStorage feature will require WBI Pathfinder installed (so that it's usable in CRP) and won't be available to parts immediately involved with engines. Due to how it works, it gives a lot of tank volume to the part's extra resources (like IntakeAir, FusionPellets) and there's currently no means to stop that behavior.

Small notice that Endurance Reconfig is being canceled as a separate mod and being folded into the Endurance mod itself.

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by JadeOfMaar

[JadeOfMaar]

I spent all day on this other all-new part for Endurance: The MB-30. It's (a squashed down freight box with stuff welded on ) an all-in-one experiment suite (holds 7 stock experiments and the 4 sensor modules related to them) with its own fuel tank, fuel cell, RCS and drone capability (so it can attach itself to a Lander while in orbit, be well able to save on part count, produce science, and endure the cost of transmitting a lot of science). I've also added and fixed attach nodes in the mount areas to accommodate it. (I have not broken anything. The other large boxes will still fit perfectly.)

It's inspired by this image of Endurance carrying 16 payload items in total.

 

[Selphadur]

Wow! Nice!

[JPLRepo]

V1.12 published. See links and massive changelog in OP.

Many many thanks to @JadeOfMaar for all the work he has put in to updating many things for this mod.

[HebaruSan]

4 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

V1.12 published. See links and massive changelog in OP.

Many many thanks to @JadeOfMaar for all the work he has put in to updating many things for this mod.

Hi, version file syntax fix submitted here:

• https://github.com/JPLRepo/Endurance/pull/37

[JPLRepo]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

Hi, version file syntax fix submitted here:

• https://github.com/JPLRepo/Endurance/pull/37

Thanks. I've incorporated into the correct branch. And I updated the github zip distribution. But I'm not going to go through all the hassle of trying to update spacedock because it would mean doing an entire new release to update that.

Far as I know this doesn't impact running of of mod anyway.

[sawg]

A couple suggestions for the mod:

• Remove the plumes from the Endurance Deep Space Engines. One of the things I liked about the mod was that the engines on the endurance had no plumes, which was similar to the movie. I liked being able to look at my space ship from the front and not seeing any plumes, but to go to the back, and find these 12 bright engines (with no plumes of course). I do like the plumes on the other craft, but removing it from the endurance would be good.
• Another comment about the Deep Space Engines - the fuel consumption is ridiculously low. At full power, the 4 engines are using 0.14 Liquid Fuel (Yet they're using 6 figure's of electricity). I feel like this is a bit too low, and doesn't challenge the player to manage their fuel consumption
• Fix the landing gear on the Ranger. Whenever I use my landing gear on the ranger, the feet clip through the ground and its back to resting on the body of the ship
• Reduce the amount of electricity used by all engines. It is impossible to use any of the ships engines at full thrust without cheating infinite electricity. Even with all fuel cells active, and all solar panels fully exposed, the engines are draining insane amounts of electricity. This is bad for people wanting to use this ship in career/science mode.
• IVA's for the crew and med bay module for the Endurance
• Add lights to the windows of the Ranger and Lander, so when you turn on the lights, the windows light up.
• Reduce the power of the RCS thrusters on the Endurance Fuel Modules, Ranger and Lander. One thing I liked doing was removing all reaction wheels, and only having the fuel module RCS thrusters on, and then slowly spinning up the ship like in the movie. Now, the thrusters are so powerful, and its not the same anymore. Some people might like this, but I prefer a lower RCS power on the Endurance. Docking with the Ranger and Lander was also a nightmare with the super high RCS power. I understand this is for in the atmosphere to maneuver the ship, but the Ranger would wobble up and down trying to lock on to Prograde because the RCS thrust were so powerful.
• Maybe integrate docking ports into the bottom of the Endurance Modules so it reduces part count.

[Cattette]

8 minutes ago, Depressed Sock said:

• Remove the plumes from the Endurance Deep Space Engines. One of the things I liked about the mod was that the engines on the endurance had no plumes, which was similar to the movie. I liked being able to look at my space ship from the front and not seeing any plumes, but to go to the back, and find these 12 bright engines (with no plumes of course). I do like the plumes on the other craft, but removing it from the endurance would be good.

You can easily do this in the engine config.

10 minutes ago, Depressed Sock said:

• Reduce the power of the RCS thrusters on the Endurance Fuel Modules, Ranger and Lander. One thing I liked doing was removing all reaction wheels, and only having the fuel module RCS thrusters on, and then slowly spinning up the ship like in the movie. Now, the thrusters are so powerful, and its not the same anymore. Some people might like this, but I prefer a lower RCS power on the Endurance. Docking with the Ranger and Lander was also a nightmare with the super high RCS power. I understand this is for in the atmosphere to maneuver the ship, but the Ranger would wobble up and down trying to lock on to Prograde because the RCS thrust were so powerful.

The RCS thrust limiter can be edited in-game by right-clicking the part with the RCS module. Just reduce this value and the problem will go away.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

5 hours ago, Depressed Sock said:

Another comment about the Deep Space Engines - the fuel consumption is ridiculously low. At full power, the 4 engines are using 0.14 Liquid Fuel (Yet they're using 6 figure's of electricity). I feel like this is a bit too low, and doesn't challenge the player to manage their fuel consumption

I'm very sure that this issue cannot happen when the engines are using LiquidFuel. And I fixed it when this happened while they would use LqdHydrogen (activated by installing Cryogenic Engines or Kerbal Atomics). The engines are supposed to use only a few hundred and up to 3000 EC/s which are within the abilities of the "tokamak reactor" converters within the parts that provide power.

Ensure that you're using Endurance v1.12 and not using Endurance Reconfig (which is now obsolete and has probably unreleased fixes). Once you've done this and you're still having problems then I would need to see your KSP.log, your Logs/ModuleManager/ and your ModuleManager.ConfigCache in order to possibly spot the source. Better still, I would need you to sift out any mod that may be affecting how EC works. No mod maker is obliged to recreate a user's massively modded install.

You say there's no challenge because you're likely using Endurance only in the stock system. I've rebalanced this mod to be able to perform alongside the popular planet packs which add incredibly distant stars and planets, and to hopefully perform well in RSS. Managing fuel consumption immediately becomes a big deal when you go further than the stock planets and where Endurance doesn't contain an obvious means to refuel the main ship, and where it would be extremely tedious to do so even when it is possible because LiquidFuel and Oxidizer are not things you can scoop up in space like you could do with LqdHydrogen in Far Future Technologies. You'll find yourself actually watching your dV when you plan to visit multiple gas giants or closely bound stars and their gravity weigh in on your budget.

It is possible (I've always considered it) that I've made dV too generous on the main ship and I've waited for anyone at all to give feedback on it, but whoever gives feedback must be a user of insterstellar systems or up-scaled systems.

This patch will strip out those plumes:

@PART[ENenduranceEngine]
{
	@EFFECTS
	{
		@running_light
		{
			!MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE,* {}
		}
		@running_heavy
		{
			!MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE,* {}
		}
	}
}

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by JadeOfMaar

[Selphadur]

This mod is so awesome after all these fixes and additions! The only problem I encounter is VTOL engine eats all electricity in seconds with even Tokamak and Fuel Cell active (using Ranger now). The minimum throttle gives like 7-8 KN of thrust and that's it, go higher and batteries are drained or "depleted atmosphere". Tried using it at altitude of like 10000m, but then it's "flame out, combustion failed" or something like that, although air speed is huge. 
Would be cool to be able to use VTOL. 
Other noticed thing would be an effect of VTOL engine sometimes randomly would be showing after using VTOL engine and won't dissapear even after turning off VTOL and closing air intakes. 

Other than these small things the mod is finally very playable with Kerbalism and electricity Endurance Reconfig was mostly fixed (only VTOL thing is still bugged). Love that Endurance Reconfig was merged into main mod!

Nice work mod authors and huge thank you!