Ore tanks are apparently required. Le sigh...

[EivlEvo]

Hey team.

I suspect I've answered my own question in the title. But apparently ore tanks are required to use the ISRU to produce fuel which kind of sucks... because I just flew my first Duna plane to Duna, and well... it needs refueling.

The next question this brings up is ModuleManager? Apparently this is a thing... (sorry... I don't really use mods). My question is, if I figure this whole thing out and just add like 10 units of ore storage to a mini ISRU or whatever... does it apply to my ships that are already in progress (I'm assuming yes) or am I essentially creating a "new part" that would need to be added which doesn't really solve my Duna plane crisis?

Additionally, if anyone knows of a better way to solve the issue, lmk. Or if you already have the lines of code for the mini isru handy. Grand. I've got the rage over here.

Thanks.

[JohnnyPanzer]

I'm no expert user of module manager, but it should change the part on the ship. What you'd need is:

1. The Module Manager .dll in your gamedata folder.

2. A patch .cfg telling module manager what to do.

I'd suggest creating your own folder in gamedata called 'dunaCrisis' to make it easier to find and edit your patch later on. In that folder you leave a new .cfg file with the module manager patch. I'll take a quick look at my (very amateurish) notes on the subject and see if I can suggest a code, then someone who actually knows what they're doing could come in and tell you how to edit my crappy code.

[JohnnyPanzer]

Try this, It should work:

@PART[ISRU]:AFTER[Squad]
	{
	%RESOURCE
		{
			%name = Ore
			%amount = 0
			%maxAmount = 10
		}
	}

Edit: Yup, tested and confirmed. It will work, it will change parts allready launched and it will allow the ISRU to produce fuel. I'm sure the code is less than optimal, but it'll solve your crisis for now.

Edited April 2, 2016 by JohnnyPanzer

[JohnnyPanzer]

You know what, I think I'll slap together a quick mod for this, unless one allready exists. It seems like a situation that would arise for other players as well, and for someone with absolutely no experience with module manager (that is, even less than me) it could be a real pain to figure out how to do even with instructions.

Anyone know if this is a thing that's allready out there?

[Snark]

5 hours ago, JohnnyPanzer said:

You know what, I think I'll slap together a quick mod for this, unless one allready exists. It seems like a situation that would arise for other players as well, and for someone with absolutely no experience with module manager (that is, even less than me) it could be a real pain to figure out how to do even with instructions.

Anyone know if this is a thing that's allready out there?

This type of issue (i.e. "here's a part that would be better with a little MM tweak") comes up from time to time-- I've seen exactly this discussion about ISRU, plus about other parts as well.

The answer is "yes, it's out there," though likely as informal ModuleManager snippets; I haven't seen an actual published mod that does it, mostly people seem to just trade the MM config around.  No reason you can't go make a mod if you want to, though! 

If I might offer a suggestion:  for the sake of maintainability, instead of doing this:

@PART[ISRU]

...do something like this instead:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleResourceConverter]:HAS[@INPUT_RESOURCE:HAS[#ResourceName[Ore]]]]

...or something along those lines.  I just hacked that together just now, haven't tested it-- MM syntax can get finicky around multiple compound filters.  So it may need some debugging and tweaking, I can't guarantee that it works as typed here.  But the gist of it is to say "any resource-converter part that has ore as an input" rather than specifically "this one ISRU part".

That way, instead of just making the change to this one, specific part, it'll work with any ISRU-type part (either present in the stock game, or added via a mod).

[JohnnyPanzer]

5 hours ago, Snark said:

[Helpful as always]

Thank you, I'll try that right away. I have the MM handbook, so I'm sure I'll get it to work eventually, even though I'm no code monkey.  You're absolutely right, it would make it much more stable in case SQUAD changes the internal names or something along those lines.

As for passing around code snippets, I figured that would be going on. I think I'll release it as a mod anyway. For players that have never even touched a line of code of any kind, much less fiddled around with MM, getting a piece of code to work with wont help much. Extracting a small mod into the gamedata directory can be enough of a challenge for some people (we're all good at different things), so I'm hoping it would prove useful to at least someone.  

[EivlEvo]

30 minutes ago, JohnnyPanzer said:

Thank you, I'll try that right away. I have the MM handbook, so I'm sure I'll get it to work eventually, even though I'm no code monkey.  You're absolutely right, it would make it much more stable in case SQUAD changes the internal names or something along those lines.

As for passing around code snippets, I figured that would be going on. I think I'll release it as a mod anyway. For players that have never even touched a line of code of any kind, much less fiddled around with MM, getting a piece of code to work with wont help much. Extracting a small mod into the gamedata directory can be enough of a challenge for some people (we're all good at different things), so I'm hoping it would prove useful to at least someone.  

Haha it'd prove useful to at least me!

[JohnnyPanzer]

1 hour ago, EivlEvo said:

Haha it'd prove useful to at least me!

I have it up on SpaceDock now. Going to create a forum thread for it ASAP, but go ahead and download it if you want it.

SpaceDock Download

Edited April 2, 2016 by JohnnyPanzer

[EivlEvo]

8 minutes ago, JohnnyPanzer said:

I have it up on SpaceDock now. Going to create a forum thread for it ASAP, but go ahead and download it if you want it.

SpaceDock Download

Thanks a ton. I'll try it this weekend. Be advised you have two minor typos in the description here... Store and unit of.

 only stor a single uni tof ore, so once you leave the surface you wont be able to keep producing fuel.

[JohnnyPanzer]

4 minutes ago, EivlEvo said:

Thanks a ton. I'll try it this weekend. Be advised you have two minor typos in the description here... Store and unit of.

 only stor a single uni tof ore, so once you leave the surface you wont be able to keep producing fuel.

Thanks for picking up on that, I changed it. And make sure you get the 1.1 version, because like an idiot I uploaded the first version without including module manager in the archive.

Edited April 2, 2016 by JohnnyPanzer

[EivlEvo]

On 4/2/2016 at 5:27 PM, JohnnyPanzer said:

Thanks for picking up on that, I changed it. And make sure you get the 1.1 version, because like an idiot I uploaded the first version without including module manager in the archive.

So... it worked perfectly. It took me 3 months to refuel my ship with the 2 mini drills and a mini ISRU (learned about balancing that), but it worked... and it flies amazingly.

This has just been a 25 year long mission you lot have helped save. Thanks a ton!

One last q. I assume once the game goes to 1.1 this would need re-doing? Or is it anticipated to keep working? And lastly... was the code you wrote above the code you stuck with? In case I get ambitious and look to mod something as such.

Thanks again all!

[JohnnyPanzer]

2 hours ago, EivlEvo said:

So... it worked perfectly. It took me 3 months to refuel my ship with the 2 mini drills and a mini ISRU (learned about balancing that), but it worked... and it flies amazingly.

This has just been a 25 year long mission you lot have helped save. Thanks a ton!

One last q. I assume once the game goes to 1.1 this would need re-doing? Or is it anticipated to keep working? And lastly... was the code you wrote above the code you stuck with? In case I get ambitious and look to mod something as such.

Thanks again all!

The code I suggested worked just fine, but I edited it with Snark's suggestions. In short, my code modded the specific ISRU parts, but with Snark's suggestion any future part that has a resource converter that uses ore as an input is modded. I included some comments in the code in case anyone wanted to edit it, you can look at it by opening up the .cfg file in notepad.

And it works just fine in 1.1, provided you use the updated version of Module Manager. I shipped my mod with ModuleManager for 1.0.5, but the updated version for 1.1 is allready available for those who want it.

Glad it worked.  Leave a picture here if you find the time, I'd love to see your ship.

[EivlEvo]

This is the craft in takeoff trim. It has a center mounted (tail) aerospike powered by 1 800 model fuel tank, and 2 nukes that are center wing mounted that have turbo ramjets mounted to get to hypersonic speeds. Additionally, as you'll see in the following photo, it carries 3 drop tanks that have juno's and the matching intakes on them (mostly for look, but a few extra kN's never hurts).

You can see that I have the main gear center mounted (like a U2) this helps with the uneven terrain, and prevents ground looping should I ever need to do a conventional landing. Additionally, I have main gear under the engine "nacelles" to prevent damage. They're mounted slightly higher. Lastly, I mounted wingtip guards, and a tail guard gear just to ensure nothing crazy happens.

The plane carries enough dV to get into LKO+, but I do a full refuel in LKO. From there, it heads to Duna under nuclear power.

Upon arrival at Duna, I like to aerocapture since the plane is built to fly prograde (obv) but to slow down it need retro-grade. I typically fire the aerospike prior to periapse, and then re-orient to prograde in the high Dunar atmosphere. From there it's simply s-turning to slow it down to suborbital velocities.

Once you reach your desired landing site, simply decelerate like a glider would, and deploy the 4 radially mounted drogues mounted by the aerospike. Once this slows your velocity enough to deploy the mains, do just that, and the craft is both balanced well enough to remain wings level, pitch neutral all the way down. I've also employed an advanced reaction wheel in the center fuselage (behind the mini ISRU that the drills are mounted to) that supplies additional control authority. Touchdown is typically 10 m/s pending site altitude.

Once on the surface, deploy your panels, your drills, and activate the ISRU to refuel (typically about a 3 month turn it seems).

Since I made this craft specifically to transport crew  around the planet of Duna, I wanted it to be able to cycle repeatedly. For takeoff, activate the aerospike, and you'll be off the ground VERY quickly. You can use that for a steep climbout to the thinner air, and at 12k it flies at 500 m/s at about 20% throttle with the nukes. Extremely efficient. Very maneuverable, and reliably VSTOL.

I can probably make the craft file available (if I can figure that out) if anyone is interested. But I'd make some minor changes to a few spots if that were the case.

Thanks for the help... let me know if you have questions!

Edited April 5, 2016 by EivlEvo
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