[1.3.0] Kerbalism v1.2.9

[ShotgunNinja]

@Mikki That's cool. Also consider sending a 'return vehicle' beforehand, with a co2 atmospheric extractor and a chemical plant that can do sabatier and anthraquinone in situ, like in 'the martian'.

[Mikki]

1 hour ago, ShotgunNinja said:

@Mikki That's cool. Also consider sending a 'return vehicle' beforehand, with a co2 atmospheric extractor and a chemical plant that can do sabatier and anthraquinone in situ, like in 'the martian'.

I think i post a missionreport until "Making History" drops, with nasty puns about myself and my insane space program.
Main goal: Survive all Kerbals "To Laythe and back on Kerbalism" and the few mentioned propulsion and spacecraft mods.
Best time ever in front of my widescreen tv KSP show... Your mod gave me the final kick for this!

I have a stock ssto and some nifty methods to stuff some mobile equipment, transfer unmanned.
I think i need a shortterm emergency ascend module/ shortterm habitat for at around four Kerbals... transfer unmanned also...
The transfervessel for six Kerbs is currently under research, if possible at all (subject to change significantly).
And probably a emergency extraction/ supply vessel capable of a possible errmmm "brachistochronic" rescue from Jool orbit back to Kerbin... Unmanned transfer also... OMG!
The mechanics of the Kerbalism landed/athmosperic ISRU is still subject of my further examination, thanks for your advice...

I play permadeath career (Started 0.9 ...), three Kerbals allready past away due to ... unconvenient happenings.... Your mod rocks the hell out of this game!

[woeller]

Are there any Recource Flowcharts out there?

I play for the first time with kerbalsim and wonder why my lab consumes so much nitrogen when it is active. A short test in the Vab planner and the vacuum revealed very different results.

See pictures below:

 

[ShotgunNinja]

@woeller I'll investigate the nitrogen issue. There is no flow graph of the resource processes, but there is some info on the wiki.

 

[woeller]

Do you need more information to investigate the issue @ShotgunNinja?

[jefferyharrell]

@woeller The reason your nitrogen supply looks like it'll run out soon is because your pressure control system is frantically using it to make new Atmosphere, a pseudo-resource that Kerbalism uses internally but that doesn't show up in the resource panel. (I'm pretty sure it doesn't anyway.) If you look at the Kerbalism GUI, under Habitat, you'll see an item labeled "pressure." In your screen shot that's at 60 kPa — kilopascals, a unit of pressure. Your vessel's pressure controller is using nitrogen to make more Atmosphere, and will continue to do so until your habitat pressure gets up to a little over 100 kPa, which is 1 atmosphere of pressure.

When you disable habitat on a part of your vessel, that section's atmosphere gets vented into space, so when you re-open that habitat the total pressure of your vessel goes down (because you just increased the total volume) and the pressure controller has to make new air to bring the pressure back up. Your consumption rate of nitrogen will drop to something very low as soon as your vessel's pressure hits about 100 kPa.

[woeller]

@jefferyharrell You are totally right! Did a quick test again with Hab enebled at launch and the pressure is about 100kpa. Thanks! The solution not to lose any nitrogen is, to not disable the hab... got it

@ShotgunNinja No further investigation necessary!

[jefferyharrell]

@woeller Glad I could help.

[New Horizons]

I recently used Kerbalism in combination with [x] Science!

With this you can still collect science, when your antenna can not reach the home world. I will post it over there, too. Maybe [x] Science! or Kerbalism can avoid this exploit in future versions.

[Jozay]

So... I have a question. I'm not sure if this is possible, but I'll ask to see what some of you think. After building and flying planes in the game I've come to the understanding that while flying (on Kirbin that is) as long as you're above 25kpa you don't need to supply oxygen to your craft. I've noticed that passenger aircraft in the real world can get around this by using their engines to pump air into the cabin in order to supply a pressurized environment and oxygen. I was wondering would it be possible to simulate this in Kerbalism, because with some of the engines in the game I'm able to fly efficiently by maintaining 10 - 12km.

 

[ModZero]

So I noticed that the Bluedog patch is incomplete, in particular the geiger counter experiment is inconsistent with the Kerbalism one, and some of the probes that should have antennas don't. I made a very basic hackfix here. Note that it only pokes a few of the probes, and it has the issue with having both "extend antenna" and "deploy antenna" show up - but Explorer I and Mercury work now, the geiger counter uses the right experiment ID, and the geiger counter has a sensor, yay.

Edited April 21, 2017 by ModZero

[Skylon]

For Station Parts Expansion, could you add a habitable area to their pressurized tubes? Or maybe this is something for the dev of that mod? 

[podbaydoor]

On 4/20/2017 at 8:36 AM, woeller said:

@jefferyharrell You are totally right! Did a quick test again with Hab enebled at launch and the pressure is about 100kpa. Thanks! The solution not to lose any nitrogen is, to not disable the hab... got it

@ShotgunNinja No further investigation necessary!

I've run into issues with consumption transients and the estimated time until empty a few times. It would really help demystify these sorts of situations if hovering over the resource to give the rate of change also broke that down into sources of production/consumption. I believe you can see the breakdown in the VAB, but not on a mission.

[Drew Kerman]

Oh yea, been meaning to ask - does anyone else not see a label when you hover over the life support system tab for Kerbalism in the VAB/SPH? Every other parts tab has a label for me except the one Kerbalism puts in there. If this is just an issue on my end I will try to take some time to hunt it down this weekend

[Magzimum]

A quick question about relays and communication with Kerbalism: Does Kerbalism override the communication system that is part of the stock game since 1.2? It appears that in map view the (green) lines that show the connection are aimed at the center of Kerbin, rather than at the various surface based communication posts. Also, I don't appear to get any relay-system working. All ships, manned and unmanned, attempt to communicate directly to Kerbin.

I really would like to get some relays around distant planets, so that I can send unmanned landers to some moons/planets that aren't 50% antennas by mass.

Still loving Kerbalism btw. Really adds something new to the game.

[ShotgunNinja]

On 4/20/2017 at 7:02 PM, New Horizons said:

With this you can still collect science, when your antenna can not reach the home world. I will post it over there, too. Maybe [x] Science! or Kerbalism can avoid this exploit in future versions

What you mean precisely? Collecting data and transmitting it are different actions. Are you able to transmit without a connection?

@Jozay
Mmm, just an idea but try maybe adding ModuleAlternator with an output of Atmosphere resource.

@Skylon
It is possible. Just add a module Habitat to a part and it will be considered habitable.

@PART[MyCrewTubesPartName]
{
  MODULE
  {
    name = Habitat
    
    // these are deduced from part bounding box, but you can specify them precisely if you want
    surface = ... // surface in m²
    volume = ...  // volume in m³
  }
}

 

18 hours ago, podbaydoor said:

It would really help demystify these sorts of situations if hovering over the resource to give the rate of change also broke that down into sources of production/consumption

That seem like a good idea.
 

13 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

Oh yea, been meaning to ask - does anyone else not see a label when you hover over the life support system tab for Kerbalism in the VAB/SPH? Every other parts tab has a label for me except the one Kerbalism puts in there. If this is just an issue on my end I will try to take some time to hunt it down this weekend

Can you send me a screenshot? I can't figure out what you are not seeing.

@Magzimum
Check out the wiki, in particular the page about how signal work. To answer your questions:

• if you enable the Signal feature, the stock CommNet system is disabled
• the surface network of DSN antennas is simplified as a single omnidirectional antenna
• high-gain antennas can only communicate with DSN (implicitly pointed)
• low-gain antennas can also communicate with other vessels
• to receive data from another vessel, a low-gain antenna need to be 'flagged as relay' in the part UI

 

 

 

[New Horizons]

As I wrote before. Kerbalism in combination with [x] science allows collecting science, when you are out of antenna reach. Experiments you are allowed to perform pop up in the [x] science window. Transmitting is not possible. Is it intended to collect science iin Kerbalism, when there is no connection to home?

[ShotgunNinja]

@New Horizons Ok I understand now... so, you have no connection on an unmanned vessel. The vessel is in fact not controllable, including all experiment parts. But [x] Science allow you to collect them anyway.

That is not intended. It is a consequence of the two mods being completely unaware of each other.

[Magzimum]

@ShotgunNinja, Thanks for the quick reply! I'm gonna figure it out...

 

I encountered something else, which I think is a bug. I accepted a rescue contract, and found Burbert Kerman stranded on Minmus. He was doing quite fine, because his EVA pack was LOADED with food, water and oxygen. However, that made the Kerbal so heavy that he couldn't jump. Some more explanation in the spoiler, together with a fix.

Spoiler

Jebediah on a normal EVA. Note that he has only 200 oxygen, no food or water.

And here's Burbert. All the bars (monoprop, etc.) were full when I found him. Some were consumed when I warped forward to take a daylight picture.

This is as high as he could jump. Remember, we're on Minmus here! Also, the jetpack just didn't work. It couldn't get Burbert off the ground.

I then opened the save game, looked up Burbert, edited the values of the EVA pack to something very low, and tried again. And it worked: he could jump and the jetpack allowed him to board the rescue ship.

 

[ShotgunNinja]

@Magzimum That 'gift pack' was a bit too generous for an EVA suit... I'll make it smaller.

[Skylon]

How long do kerbals last without food/water (in pressurised vessel).

Do they die eventually?

Edited April 22, 2017 by Skylon

[blakemw]

17 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

I encountered something else, which I think is a bug. I accepted a rescue contract, and found Burbert Kerman stranded on Minmus. He was doing quite fine, because his EVA pack was LOADED with food, water and oxygen. However, that made the Kerbal so heavy that he couldn't jump. Some more explanation in the spoiler, together with a fix.

Man, what a hog.

Actually I've encountered a similiar thing with "recover kerbal and his wreck" contracts, the food and water adds several tonnes to the vessel to be recovered, which sucks when the contract informed you you'd be recovering a 1t pod.

Edited April 22, 2017 by blakemw

[Magzimum]

@ShotgunNinja, First of all, the huge supplies did not help Burbert at all. He died of CO₂ poisoning within 2 Minmus-days, with his oxygen/food/water levels still above 90%.

But I get the feeling that the game (or rather, Kerbalism) resets all the life-support parameters of the Soon-to-be-rescued-Kerbal™ to completely full when you get within physics range (2.2 km). When I get that close, the Kerbal will typically be rescued within a few minutes, so she/he does not need that many supplies. In fact, it would be nice if they are in actual danger!

[ShotgunNinja]

@Magzimum I increased the amounts recently, way too much probably. The co2 poisoning is because as of now there is no way to 'gift a process'. But I'm looking at ways to make it possible.

 

@Skylon Food: 15 days, Water: 3 days, Oxygen: 3 minutes

Pressurization only slow down stress.

[Magzimum]

Regarding the relays: I have two satellites orbiting Minmus, each with 4 low gain antennas (), and 4 high gain antennas (). They orbit at around 400 km altitude. Obviously they are deployed.

Spoiler

My "relay".

However, an orbital station at 40 km altitude, with two RA-2 antennas (these: ) does not appear to connect to them.

Picture of the map view and the station:

Spoiler

The "Minmus Temp Station Mk2 Ship" (which needs a new name):

Is this intended? Should I just put my relays into a lower orbit? Or is there a trick I can use?

Edited April 22, 2017 by Magzimum