adding an ocean to Duna

[KerikBalm]

I was wondering if anyone could give me a planet editing tutorial.. basically I would like to add an ocean to Duna that is at an altitude of roughly 500 meters, so that Duna has shallow seas in ints lowlands and canyons.

Next I'd like to adjust the atmosphere, to double the atmospheric pressure, and lower the MW of the atmosphere to about 34, and add oxygen to the atmosphere.

Much later... I'd like to change the texture so that the area near the shorelines is green... seems to me that such a planet would be a quite fun planet... something like an early mars with life...  a dying world, but not dead yet...

[OhioBob]

I believe the mod Kopernicus is typically used to make changes like this.  Unfortunately I've never used it, so I can explain how to do it.  I have no idea now to go about adding an ocean or changing the shorelines, but I can help with the atmospheric changes.  I know Kopernicus can do it, but there is also a simpler mod called Bodyloader that can do it.  I used Bodyloader in a mod that I developed to changes the planets' atmospheres (Realistic Atmospheres).  If it would help, I could easily write a config to use with Bodyloader to change Duna's atmosphere to anything you want.

 

Edited March 24, 2016 by OhioBob

[KerikBalm]

Hmm that would be helpful, but I really want to add an ocean to Duna. An oxygen containing atmosphere doesn't make much sense unless there's enough liquid water to plausibly support a lot of photosynthetic life.

The color isn't such a big deal... it can be brown/red algae

I see that one could also change the color of the atmosphere... making its hue hlafway between what it currently is, and what Kerbin's atmosphere currently is, could also be fun.

I think it would be really really fun with a shallow ocean... looking at kerbal maps, I'm thinking 750m, making it only 625m deep at its deepest point.

[Nhawks17]

7 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Hmm that would be helpful, but I really want to add an ocean to Duna. An oxygen containing atmosphere doesn't make much sense unless there's enough liquid water to plausibly support a lot of photosynthetic life.

The color isn't such a big deal... it can be brown/red algae

I see that one could also change the color of the atmosphere... making its hue hlafway between what it currently is, and what Kerbin's atmosphere currently is, could also be fun.

I think it would be really really fun with a shallow ocean... looking at kerbal maps, I'm thinking 750m, making it only 625m deep at its deepest point.

While I think it'd be awesome to see something like this, I don't think Duna has oxygen in its atmosphere. None the less I'd still like to see a mod like this  

[KerikBalm]

Well, it wasn't as hard as I though, pics are uploading now. I still want to tweak the color of the ocean, and right now the ocean doesn't show up in map view, nor does it show up if one zooms out too far... but it works. Also I increased the radius of duna by 750 meters, without changing the surface gravity... somehow I think this made the game recalculate Duna's mass, and Ike was no longer tidally locked.

The ocean must be at elevation 0. So what I did was increase the radius of Duna by 750 meters, and then "offset" the heightmap by 750 meters, so that the terrain is the same as it always was.

I just tried adjusting surface gravity by 320,000^2/320,750^2, but I haven't checked if this prevents Ike from wandering in the sky of Duna.

I'd still like to adjust the color of the low places on duna to be greenish.

Rapiers are quite OP'd on this Duna... as are Whiplashes... I'm tempted to increase the surface gravity to .37 Gs (Mars: 0.376 G), and then do some math and speed up the rotation of Duna and Ike to compensate (I see there is a line for tidal locking in Kopernicus, I may try using that and avoid the math).

Rapiers and whiplashes will easily get you over orbital velocity, and even panthers in AB mode will easily hurl you out of the atmosphere and nearly into orbit... Maybe I should remove oxygen from the atmosphere... its really powerful for a body with such a low orbital velocity.

[KerikBalm]

Before I had the hight offset working, showing the atmosphere of Duna with a new color... halfway between the kerbin values and the old duna values:

 

Zoomed way out, just at the limit to when it doesn't show the ocean:

I may want to lower the ocean slightly, so that I don't have liquid water at the frozen poles:

Yet other channels already do not connect:

Looking at the craft from below, ready for liftoff:

Climbing straight up

Pitching over:

accelerating:

Ok... we're going pretty fast, and that apoapsis is in space:

Orbit is easily reached with airbreathing spaceplanes:

Not all of duna is so wet...

That water there is near the face on duna.

[KerikBalm]

Well, I'm progressing... I finally got my heightmaps working more or less right, so I've deepened the channels so that they connect, without just globally raising the sea level. I've also raised the bottom of two polar craters, so that there aren't lakes in areas that should be frozen.

I also tweaked the ocean color to have less blue, and more red and green (I was assuming the values were R,G,B), its now more of a greenish color, pretty close to sea green, which is good I guess. Now it "looks" plausible that there's oxygen in the atmosphere without having to change the terrain color.

I downloaded kittopia exporter, but haven't used it yet - supposedly it should allow me to export a texture file for the map view that will show the seas.

Lastly... I've found that Ike is actually orbiting too *slow* for duna's rotation, it moves in the sky in the same direction as the sun... I need to figure out what changed, and do some math to get it orbiting with the same period as Duna's rotation.

While SSTOs are easy... landing is still quite hard. The atmospheric pressure was doubled, but the MW of the atmosphere was decreased, and the atmosphere was made a little warmer. While everything on duna that isn't covered by water is 750m lower in the atmosphere than before... its still a very thin atmosphere. Landing speeds are still quite high. Landing on the water may be attractive because of how flat it is, but its hard to get up to the high takeoff speed with the drag of the water and the low thrust of the jet engines.

The Wheesely, Goliath, and Juno perform quite poorly in the thin atmosphere. The Panther in afterburning mode functions OK, but its TWR is worse than the Whiplash... the Whiplash and the Rapier are basically the best airbreathers... but they also make getting to orbit trivial. Their TWR is still pretty good, and I think tailsitter VTOLs are the best options for takeoff and landing from the ground. My seaplanes cheesily takeoff by diving under the surface, and then climb up at 45 degrees and just launch themselves up out of the water with a >1:1 TWR.

[KerikBalm]

The current state of Duna and its oceans in my little mod.

[theJesuit]

Good work!  You seem to be making great progress.  

Peace.

[KerikBalm]

Well, I'm making a new version with a 3x thicker atmosphere (making it over 0.4 atms), and a 3x higher sea level.

In the end, because changing the radius of Duna somehow affects the ike-Duna tidal locking, I stopped that because it was more trouble than its worth.

The first ocean involves a -750m offset to the heighmap, making duna 99.765625% as wide as it was before (ignoring the ocean, just based off of terrain).

The 2nd one with the thicker atmosphere, and deeper ocean has a 2250m offset, making duna's terrain 99.296875% as wide as it was before... I think no one will care. I thought with the deeper ocean, I wouldn't need to adjust the height of duna to get certain channels to fill with liquid, but I was wrong... I may apply the previous heighmap adjustment, just with a lower intensity

The deeper ocean is less green than the shallow one.

Maps will be uploaded shortly, along with some pics of the seas lose up, and the idfferent atmosphere colors

[KerikBalm]

Well, without expanding the radius of duna... Duna still does not tidally lock to Ike... is it the heigh offset breaking the ike tidal locking? have I broken Ike's tidal locking previously and never noticed (perhaps when I installed kopernicus and OPM?)

Anyway, the two versions... Decaying duna

(I think I changed the close up sea colora bit from what is pictured here, atmo color hasn't changed)

It changes as you get higher (the mapview texture hasn't kicked in yet here)

 

which goes with this terrain map / mapview:

Then there's the "Vibrant Duna".. representing a younger duna with an even thicker atmosphere, and more water:

 

One channel is still mostly dry... the left narrow one on the previous "shallow and greenish" version.. but the water is starting to fill it in... but I'm not sure I'd want to add any more water to duna... what I'd like to do now is push the ice farther north in this most recent version

 

FWIW, the face on duna is above water in the top version... but below water in the 2nd version... I think the rover camera is as well

Edited March 28, 2016 by KerikBalm