[1.3.0] Kerbalism v1.2.9

[aluc24]

12 minutes ago, chaoseclipse01 said:

Are you currently going through a CME? Don't quote me on this, but I don't think the message appears when you're currently experiencing a CME, which can last up to 10 hours game time. Also, the electricity symbol only appears when you're consuming EC without generating EC.

Also, what version of Kerbalism are you using? I was using 1.2.8 when I took my pictures.

No, no CME at the moment. I am also using 1.2.8. Uh, this is getting tedious - isn't there another way of protecting Kerbals from solar storms? I mean, they are very frequent, and what if I'm making a many-year long trip to outer planets? Solar storms are bound to happen, and more than once for sure.

Edited May 25, 2017 by aluc24

[chaoseclipse01]

7 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

No, no CME at the moment. I am also using 1.2.8. Uh, this is getting tedious - isn't there another way of protecting Kerbals from solar storms? I mean, they are very frequent, and what if I'm making a many-year long trip to outer planets? Solar storms are bound to happen, and more than one for sure.

You'll have to make stops at planets or moons and use their dark side as a shield, or get into low orbit around a planet or moon with a magnetosphere, otherwise you're going to need like 350 active shields to protect you against the 10.0 rad/h radiation you'll face during a CME.

[aluc24]

1 minute ago, chaoseclipse01 said:

You'll have to make stops at planets or moons and use their dark side as a shield, or get into low orbit around a planet or moon with a magnetosphere, otherwise you're going to need like 350 active shields to protect you against the 10.0 rad/h radiation you'll face during a CME.

This sucks big time... @ShotgunNinja, are you reading this? I'm sure you would agree that this issue needs a better solution...

[chaoseclipse01]

7 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

This sucks big time... @ShotgunNinja, are you reading this? I'm sure you would agree that this issue needs a better solution...

I don't find anything wrong with it, it's a real life problem that prevents us from exploring the solar system, you have to take into account the radiation the sun puts out, as well as any radiation belts you have to pass through, as well as having to dance around CME's. Wait until ShotgunNinja puts in different types of radiation and having to worry about specific shielding for each type of radiation you'll have to face.

[aluc24]

Just now, chaoseclipse01 said:

I don't find anything wrong with it, it's a real life problem that prevents us from exploring the solar system, you have to take into account the radiation the sun puts out, as well as any radiation belts you have to pass through, as well as having to dance around CME's. Wait until ShotgunNinja puts in different types of radiation and having to worry about specific shielding for each type of radiation you'll have to face.

A lot of things aren't exactly realistic in KSP. I am, in fact, realism freak, but if a particular issue makes gameplay unreasonable, then maybe something should be done about it... Just my opinion. My solution would be like this: implement clear CME prediction method, so that one could schedule short trips (say, up to Jool) to avoid CME's. For long trips to the outer planets, maybe some heavy shield or something, that would be costly, but still reasonable.

[chaoseclipse01]

15 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

A lot of things aren't exactly realistic in KSP. I am, in fact, realism freak, but if a particular issue makes gameplay unreasonable, then maybe something should be done about it... Just my opinion. My solution would be like this: implement clear CME prediction method, so that one could schedule short trips (say, up to Jool) to avoid CME's. For long trips to the outer planets, maybe some heavy shield or something, that would be costly, but still reasonable.

You know Jool has an absolutely enormous Magnetosphere, right? a vast majority of its moons' orbits are actually inside of its magnetosphere, you could easily land on one of them and be protected from a CME, as well as say gather ore and other resources to refill your Oxygen, CO2, Nitrogen, Ammonia, Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer, and Monopropellent while you wait for the CME to pass, then carry on your way to any planet beyond Jool, or wait there until you get a good window to travel to the outer planet you want.

Edited May 25, 2017 by chaoseclipse01

[aluc24]

Just now, chaoseclipse01 said:

You know Jool has an absolutely enormous Magnetosphere, right? a vast majority of it's moons are actually inside the orbit of it's magnetosphere, you could easily land on one of them and be protected from a CME, as well as say gather ore to refill your Oxygen, CO2, Nitrogen, Ammonia, Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer, and Monopropellent while you wait for the CME to pass, then carry on your way to any planet beyond Jool, or wait there until you get a good window to travel to the outer planet you want.

Yeah, that's possible, I suppose, but it would take one hell of a craft, plus lander, plus refinery, etc... I doubt it would be done this way even in the real world.

I reinstalled Kerbalism 1.2.8, and tried once again to get that electricity symbol to appear. It just doesn't. I slapped all the science instruments on a new probe, put it on the orbit, tried everything you suggested up to now. It still doesn't show up. What am I doing wrong? I could swear I've seen that symbol sometime earlier, but didn't pay attention to it.

[chaoseclipse01]

6 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

Yeah, that's possible, I suppose, but it would take one hell of a craft, plus lander, plus refinery, etc... I doubt it would be done this way even in the real world.

I reinstalled Kerbalism 1.2.8, and tried once again to get that electricity symbol to appear. It just doesn't. I slapped all the science instruments on a new probe, put it on the orbit, tried everything you suggested up to now. It still doesn't show up. What am I doing wrong? I could swear I've seen that symbol sometime earlier, but didn't pay attention to it.

Sending a single ship would be impossible, you'd need to send an entire refinery first to one of Jool's moons (preferably unmanned, meaning you're going to need a CommNet set up in advance of that) as well as to your target planet, then send any supplies you could potentially use to make refilling and refueling faster, then send your ship or an SSTO to land, or have a ship with a reusable and refuelable lander that can dock to your main ship.

The thing that bothers me most is it seems like Kerbalism's advanced difficulty settings are gone out of the pause menu, and I could've sworn that Map Mode and the Tracking Stations used to tell you when the next CME would occur in previous Kerbalism versions, but I might be remembering wrong.

Edited May 25, 2017 by chaoseclipse01

[aluc24]

4 minutes ago, chaoseclipse01 said:

Sending a single ship would be impossible, you'd need to send an entire refinery first to one of Jool's moons (preferably unmanned, meaning you're going to need a CommNet set up in advance of that) as well as to your target planet, then send any supplies you could potentially use to make refilling and refueling faster, then send your ship or an SSTO to land, or have a ship with a reusable and refuelable lander that can dock to your main ship.

 

That's quite tedious... I mean, it makes certain sense, but if you only have to do it because of CME's, then this issue really begs a different solution.

4 minutes ago, chaoseclipse01 said:

The thing that bothers me most is it seems like Kerbalism's advanced difficulty settings is gone out of the pause menu, and I could've sworn that Map Mode and the Tracking Stations used to tell you when the next CME would occur in previous Kerbalism versions, but I might be remembering wrong.

Yeah, we really need @ShotgunNinja input on this. I certainly can't get it to work, so I've put all my manned missions on halt.

 

Edited May 25, 2017 by aluc24

[Waxing_Kibbous]

40 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

This sucks big time... @ShotgunNinja, are you reading this? I'm sure you would agree that this issue needs a better solution...

Feel free to adjust the settings.cfg in your kerbalism folder:

// storm settings
  StormMinTime = 2160000.0            // minimum interval between storms over a system
  StormMaxTime = 8640000.0            // maximum interval between storms over a system
  StormDuration = 21600.0             // how long a storm last once it hit
  StormEjectionSpeed = 1000000.0      // cme speed in m/s

 

[aluc24]

Just now, Waxing_Kibbous said:

Feel free to adjust the settings.cfg in your kerbalism folder:

// storm settings
  StormMinTime = 2160000.0            // minimum interval between storms over a system
  StormMaxTime = 8640000.0            // maximum interval between storms over a system
  StormDuration = 21600.0             // how long a storm last once it hit
  StormEjectionSpeed = 1000000.0      // cme speed in m/s

 

Yeah, I know, but I love the fact that CME's are happening. It makes a lot of sense and adds another challenge. But it is a bit unfair at this point, because it's random and there's no escape from on if you get caught on interplanetary flight.

[chaoseclipse01]

@aluc24 It's tedious, but it's not just because of CME's. Those pose the biggest threat to space travel, especially since Lead and Faraday Cages only protect so well without having about a meter of shielding between you and the radiation, but it makes sense to send your refineries and supplies separately to conserve the weight of your ship for better fuel efficiency and thrust to weight ratio.

Alternatively, you can bypass the radiation and the need to bring copious amounts of supplies if you use Deep Freeze.

Edited May 25, 2017 by chaoseclipse01

[aluc24]

Just now, chaoseclipse01 said:

@aluc24 It's tedious, but it's not just because of CME's. Those pose the biggest threat to space travel, especially since Lead and Faraday Cages only protect so well without having about a meter of shielding between you and the radiation, but it makes sense to send your refineries and supplies separately to conserve the weight of your ship for better fuel efficiency and thrust to weight ratio. 

Well, you might be right about that. Anyway, it would be great if there would be a way of predicting CME's so that we could at least make 2-4 year trips without getting Kerbals fried. I mean, even if you use Jool as a mid-trip stop, it still takes almost 3 years to reach it... And as of current, there will be at least several CME's along the way.

[chaoseclipse01]

3 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

Well, you might be right about that. Anyway, it would be great if there would be a way of predicting CME's so that we could at least make 2-4 year trips without getting Kerbals fried. I mean, even if you use Jool as a mid-trip stop, it still takes almost 3 years to reach it... And as of current, there will be at least several CME's along the way.

That's where Dres comes in handy. Just get into orbit until half an hour of the CME, then land and stay on the night side and that should shield you from a CME, unless I'm overlooking the fact that being landed on the dark side of a planet doesn't actually protect you from a CME with this mod.

Edited May 25, 2017 by chaoseclipse01

[ShotgunNinja]

@chaoseclipse01, @aluc24 Some clarifications. The storm problem indicator (the lighting icon) appear after a CME has been ejected from the Sun and is predicted to hit the vessel (yellow icon) and then when it actually hit the vessel (red icon). It isn't related to ElectricCharge. There was never an alternative indication for this, is has been in this form since the beginning. Also there is no difficulty setting in the KSP menu, for various technical reasons.

To deal with storms, you need a small pod dedicated to be a 'storm shelter'. Choose a small one, and set its shielding to the max. For the rest of the vessel you can choose a lower amount of shielding. When the CME is ejected, you are notified by warning message and by the yellow storm icon. Both of these also show the estimated time to impact. In that time, you have to move your crew to the 'storm shelter' pod. Then 'disable' all other habitats in the vessel. You will see in the telemetry panel that the shielding factor is now entirely determined by the Shielding amount in that storm shelter pod. In this way, the crew can survive quite a few storms. You can reuse the shelter approach even when crossing radiation belts. You don't simply keep the crew in the shelter all the time because living space is also determined from the set of enabled habitats.

For greenhouse, the current one is in fact overpowered. It will take a much bigger biomass to sustain even a single crew. A single greenhouse can now sustain 2 kerbals, provided that you have enough free Food capacity when it is harvest time.

[aluc24]

1 minute ago, chaoseclipse01 said:

That's where Dres comes in handy. Just land and stay on the night side and that should shield you from a CME, unless I'm overlooking the fact that being landed on the dark side of a planet doesn't actually protect you from a CME with this mod.

Dres is inclined so much, that the dV requirements would shoot through the roof. Then again, what about Sarnus from Outer planets mod? It takes 4 years at minimum from Jool to reach Sarnus. Or Eeloo from stock system. That's a whole bunch of CME's to survive. You see where I'm going with this. We need a different solution, because avoiding CME's is just too impractical in long trips.

1 minute ago, ShotgunNinja said:

@chaoseclipse01, @aluc24 Some clarifications. The storm problem indicator (the lighting icon) appear after a CME has been ejected from the Sun and is predicted to hit the vessel (yellow icon) and then when it actually hit the vessel (red icon). It isn't related to ElectricCharge. There was never an alternative indication for this, is has been in this form since the beginning. Also there is no difficulty setting in the KSP menu, for various technical reasons.

To deal with storms, you need a small pod dedicated to be a 'storm shelter'. Choose a small one, and set its shielding to the max. For the rest of the vessel you can choose a lower amount of shielding. When the CME is ejected, you are notified by warning message and by the yellow storm icon. Both of these also show the estimated time to impact. In that time, you have to move your crew to the 'storm shelter' pod. Then 'disable' all other habitats in the vessel. You will see in the telemetry panel that the shielding factor is now entirely determined by the Shielding amount in that storm shelter pod. In this way, the crew can survive quite a few storms. You can reuse the shelter approach even when crossing radiation belts. You don't simply keep the crew in the shelter all the time because living space is also determined from the set of enabled habitats.

For greenhouse, the current one is in fact overpowered. It will take a much bigger biomass to sustain even a single crew. A single greenhouse can now sustain 2 kerbals, provided that you have enough free Food capacity when it is harvest time.

Thanks for your answer. But in my Eve mission, I had all my crew in the MK3 pod, with maximum shielding, and no other habitats. They all went from 30% radiation to 90% radiation in just 5 hours, and died soon afterwards. Even the maximum shielding didn't protect them enough.

Is there a way to know when the next storm is going to hit, so we can plan missions in advance?

Ok, got it for the greenhouse. But it would be great if the VAB planner would somehow indicate more accurately about how long can the crew survive. My mission failed because the planner predicted that the crew will have more food than it actually did.

[chaoseclipse01]

@ShotgunNinja That's my bad on the symbol, I'm so used to seeing a symbol like that referring to electricity from all the danger signs I see that I forgot in Kerbalism it's the Storm Symbol. So that was an error in my explanation. I also forgot about the disabling habitats as well because I have a really bad habit of always using the OTP K Shuttle Cockpit as being the only real living quarters for my vessels, then having the two OPT J Crewtanks and Mobile Lab (Use them as extra ECLSS modules that still function without the need of the habitat being enabled) being disabled until I get to a place to do science.

[ShotgunNinja]

12 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

I had all my crew in the MK3 pod, with maximum shielding, and no other habitats. They all went from 30% radiation to 90% radiation in just 5 hours, and died soon afterwards. Even the maximum shielding didn't protect them enough.

Consider this: radiation when CME hit a vessel is 5 rad/h, so in 5h they were subjected to environment radiation of 25 rad before shielding is applied. With max shielding, you get only 5% of the environment radiation. So they accumulated 1.25 rad during the storm. Given the tolerance of 50 rad total that a crew member has, it means they were supposed to degenerate only 2.5% on their radiation bar, so to speak. So something must be wrong, can you please double-check that you are not using custom settings for the storm radiation?

14 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

Is there a way to know when the next storm is going to hit, so we can plan missions in advance?

With the default settings, the mean time between storms is 250 days. That's as much as you are going to get in term of information about solar events, the actual ejection time is generated at random.

16 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

But it would be great if the VAB planner would somehow indicate more accurately about how long can the crew survive. My mission failed because the planner predicted that the crew will have more food than it actually did.

It does already, with the exception that it doesn't take into consideration free Food capacity at time of harvest. If you bring some Food to get the crew up to time of harvest, that container alone should have enough free capacity when the time comes. If you are seeing an error in planner instead, then provide a test case and I'll look at it.

@chaoseclipse01 No problem. In fact the lighting icon is not really appropriate, I'm thinking of changing it to some kind of 'spiral' icon at the next refactor (to represent solar plasma in general). Also the enabling/disabling of habitats is maybe the least intuitive aspect of the mod.

[aluc24]

3 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

Consider this: radiation when CME hit a vessel is 5 rad/h, so in 5h they were subjected to environment radiation of 25 rad before shielding is applied. With max shielding, you get only 5% of the environment radiation. So they accumulated 1.25 rad during the storm. Given the tolerance of 50 rad total that a crew member has, it means they were supposed to degenerate only 2.5% on their radiation bar, so to speak. So something must be wrong, can you please double-check that you are not using custom settings for the storm radiation?

With the default settings, the mean time between storms is 250 days. That's as much as you are going to get in term of information about solar events, the actual ejection time is generated at random.

It does already, with the exception that it doesn't take into consideration free Food capacity at time of harvest. If you bring some Food to get the crew up to time of harvest, that container alone should have enough free capacity when the time comes. If you are seeing an error in planner instead, then provide a test case and I'll look at it.

@chaoseclipse01 No problem. In fact the lighting icon is not really appropriate, I'm thinking of changing it to some kind of 'spiral' icon at the next refactor (to represent solar plasma in general). Also the enabling/disabling of habitats is maybe the least intuitive aspect of the mod.

I found the problem. My MK3 pod had full shielding, while greenhouse had none. But then again, how do I disable habitat on greenhouse during CME's so that Kerbals can "hide" in the pod? Or is it intentional (food radiation poisoning)?

[ShotgunNinja]

2 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

I found the problem. My MK3 pod had full shielding, while greenhouse had none. But then again, how do I disable habitat on greenhouse during CME's so that Kerbals can "hide" in the pod? Or is it intentional (food radiation poisoning)?

Mmm, no that is not intentional. I didn't think of this. The greenhouse has to be an habitat for the pressure threshold of growth, but the implementation was a bit rushed at the time. The only solution available for now is to disable the greenhouse during the storm. The crop will not grow during those few hours but that's it, there are no other side effects.

Edited May 25, 2017 by ShotgunNinja

[chaoseclipse01]

10 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

It does already, with the exception that it doesn't take into consideration free Food capacity at time of harvest. If you bring some Food to get the crew up to time of harvest, that container alone should have enough free capacity when the time comes. If you are seeing an error in planner instead, then provide a test case and I'll look at it.

@chaoseclipse01 No problem. In fact the lighting icon is not really appropriate, I'm thinking of changing it to some kind of 'spiral' icon at the next refactor (to represent solar plasma in general). Also the enabling/disabling of habitats is maybe the least intuitive aspect of the mod.

The real problem is that if you select a container that doesn't have storage capacity of at least 2500 units of food in the container you selected, you lose whatever units couldn't be stored. I had to find that out the hard way, now I keep my food and water storage separate to ensure I don't make the same mistake, as well as disable crossfeed on food containers I don't want to be touched until the first one I want emptied does.

And yeah, I had several missions go down the drain before I read up on how to survive CME's, then I just started setting up 4 manned modules for ECLSS redundancy and kept the other three modules disabled to keep shielding weight down and got into the habit of just building that way and forgot why I did that in the first place.

Edited May 25, 2017 by chaoseclipse01

[aluc24]

Just now, ShotgunNinja said:

Mmm, no that is not intentional. I didn't think of this. The greenhouse has to be an habitat for the pressure threshold of growth, but the implementation was a bit rushed at the time. The only solution available for now is to disable the greenhouse during the storm. The crow will not grow during those few hours but that's it, there are no other side effects.

That probably needs testing. Because when I tried disabling greenhouse in the VAB, the planner didn't reflect it in the radiation calculations, unlike when disabling habitat on other modules.

1 minute ago, chaoseclipse01 said:

The real problem is that if you select a container that doesn't have storage capacity of at least 2500 units of food in the container you selected, you lose whatever units couldn't be stored. I had to find that out the hard way, now I keep my food and water storage separate to ensure I don't make the same mistake, as well as disable crossfeed on food containers I don't want to be touched until the first one I want emptied does.

And yeah, I had several missions go down the drain before I read up on how to survive CME's, then I just started setting up 4 manned modules for ECLSS redundancy and kept the other three modules disabled to keep shielding weight do and got into the habit of just building that way and forgot why I did that in the first place.

That makes me think, it would be great if there was one or two more parts that could do the ECLSS function. I mean, adding an additional pod to your ship just so you can get that extra scrubber doesn't make a lot of sense...

[chaoseclipse01]

2 minutes ago, aluc24 said:

That makes me think, it would be great if there was one or two more parts that could do the ECLSS function. I mean, adding an additional pod to your ship just so you can get that extra scrubber doesn't make a lot of sense...

I kinda hope that at some point @ShotgunNinja sets up a Tech Tree node unlock so that ECLSS and the Chemical Plants can be interchangeable. As in, if you intend on having a lot of manned pods, you can select processes that are normally in the CP's as ECLSS processes, and if you plan on having a single manned pod, you could use the CP's to have ECLSS processes to make up for not having more than one manned pod.

[chaoseclipse01]

@ShotgunNinja I almost forgot, the name of SCO of NH₃ to N₂ could be shortened to SCOA Process (Pronounced SKO-AH), and I think a better description would be the full name of the process "Selective Catalytic Oxidation of Ammonia to Nitrogen and Water Vapor" then the next line down of the description would be "Passes Ammonia and Oxygen through a heated ZSM-5 Catalyst, which decays into Nitrogen and Water Vapor."

Not a lot of people know NH₃ is the formula for Ammonia, so this for the description might help people understand what the process is for.

Since Zeolite Socony Mobil-5 (ZSM-5) has been around since the late 60's, maybe also move the SCOA Process unlock to Meta-Materials (Or the tech level equivalent for Stock, can't remember off the top of my head, it's been a long while since I played completely stock) to give players a fighting chance at interplanetary missions without having to pack extra Nitrogen Tanks in their craft (My biggest problem being part counts. I can plan and run a mission without a Nitrogen generator, but the part counts start stacking up and I take large performance hits). Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus only has so much science before you really need to branch out to other planets to keep getting a flow of Science.

Edited May 26, 2017 by chaoseclipse01

[panarchist]

Looks like KSP 1.3 broke Kerbalism BADLY.  I get a CTD just while starting KSP up, with no other mods but Kerbalism.  I mean, I expect this with version changes, since every release breaks all the major mods, but just confirming it early.