[1.11] RemoteTech v1.9.9 [2020-12-19]

[Zhetaan]

On 8/27/2016 at 6:23 PM, aluc24 said:

Yeah, but I mean, the whole idea of signal delay becomes obsolete if it makes some things (like rovers) impossible to control...

Not impossible; just slow.  They do this with Opportunity and Curiosity every day--or every sol, I should say.  I'll say it took some getting used to, but it works for me.  In fairness, though, I don't use probe rovers further away than Duna and Eve.

[aluc24]

20 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

Not impossible; just slow.  They do this with Opportunity and Curiosity every day--or every sol, I should say.  I'll say it took some getting used to, but it works for me.  In fairness, though, I don't use probe rovers further away than Duna and Eve.

How do you make it work? Press W for 20 seconds, wait a minute, and then watch rover go 20 meters? Kind of gets frustrating, I think

[Zhetaan]

@aluc24:

It takes a bit of planning, just as a real-life mission.  Avoid awful terrain, zoom out a little so you can see what's coming, and feel free to turn down the drive motors (it's a tweakable that you find by overriding traction control) to give yourself a bit of cushion until you can get used to the delay.  When I send rovers to Duna, for example, I tend to do it Pathfinder-style and send a base with the heavy, non-repeatable science modules (Goo and Jr.), the big antenna, and the power structure to run it, and a micro-rover in a service bay that I decouple and can run around with.  The rover has all of the repeatable science (barometer, thermometer, &c.).  I tend to land near the borders of biomes so I can rove around, pick up the repeatable bits of science, and transmit them back.  The key is to set the motor controls so that pressing W doesn't cause the thing to jump and to set the camera so that you can see what's a minute ahead of you, because if you see a bad thing coming sooner than that, it's too late to stop it.  I admit that this play style isn't for everybody, but I enjoy the almost otherworldly disconnection from the spacecraft and the need to know what I plan to do a minute before I see it happen.  Once I got used to it, I found that knowing in advance what I'm going to do frees me up to enjoy the experience of going around with a small probe to see what there is to see on Duna--I rather take a cue from @Overland on that one.  He likes rovers so much that he chains them together to make trains and runs all over Kerbin with them.  I don't know whether he's even been off-planet in the past year; there's a lot to see on the planets in KSP, and if you're going to get into a rover to take a look, you may as well take the time to enjoy the view.

So yes, it's slow, but it can be rewarding in its own way.  It's only frustrating if you want to get to Point B right away--in which case, I agree that signal delay is not for you.  There certainly is no shame in that--the option to turn it off exists because there are people who find that fits their play style better.  So long as you're having fun, you're winning the game here.

Edited September 1, 2016 by Zhetaan

[Poodmund]

I've been working on a Remote Tech Antenna Selector spreadsheet over the last short while as I sometimes find it difficult in-game to see what antennas are suitable for missions, networks etc. I thought that I'd share it here in case anyone wants to use it.

Please let me know if I've done anything stupid, can improve it anyway or if there are more antenna sets you'd like me to add.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wtyd_xPI8djD7-E1jLdtOsxPwLhE2ku_zptRqJfLEfQ/

You can tab to the 'Antenna Selector' sheet and choose your body from the drop down list to see which antennas are suitable. All suitable antennas are calculated from Kerbin for planetary suggestions and when choosing a moon is suggests those that have a range greater than the max. distance between parent and body but less than the max. distance plus twice the SOI.

EDIT: Updated it to consider when the Cone Angles are too small when a planet is at its closest approach to cover the whole SOI.

Edited September 4, 2016 by Poodmund

[gredawarha]

Hello fellow KPS players.

Been away from KSP for the summer, just loaded up and unsurprisingly loads of updates and out of date add ons.  Decided on a fresh install and added the latest remote tech, it's installed correctly as upon loading it shows a new (to me) pop up where you can configure the app but when I start a new sandbox game no matter how far I travel (farthest I have tried is Mun) I don't lose control.  Am I missing something?

Thanks for any help.

[Stratickus]

11 hours ago, Poodmund said:

I've been working on a Remote Tech Antenna Selector spreadsheet over the last short while as I sometimes find it difficult in-game to see what antennas are suitable for missions, networks etc. I thought that I'd share it here in case anyone wants to use it.

Please let me know if I've done anything stupid, can improve it anyway or if there are more antenna sets you'd like me to add.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wtyd_xPI8djD7-E1jLdtOsxPwLhE2ku_zptRqJfLEfQ/

You can tab to the 'Antenna Selector' sheet and choose your body from the drop down list to see which antennas are suitable. All suitable antennas are calculated from Kerbin for planetary suggestions and when choosing a moon is suggests those that have a range greater than the max. distance between parent and body but less than the max. distance plus twice the SOI.

EDIT: Updated it to consider when the Cone Angles are too small when a planet is at its closest approach to cover the whole SOI.

@Poodmund this is awesome. I try to add the antennas I need and not pepper the entire ship with every and all available antennas. This will go along way in figuring out which antennas are best for a particular mission set instead of hovering over each antenna in the VAB and trying to figure it out. I also like that you've added other antenna mods (ones I presume are common). I have no idea which antenna mods are the most common or if that even played into your decision to include them, but 2 other mods that I have that specifically add antennas deliberately for RT that were not included are ORIGAMI antennas and Antennas. Food for thought. Either way, as is this thing is gold.

Edited September 4, 2016 by Stratickus

[Poodmund]

21 minutes ago, Stratickus said:

@Poodmund this is awesome. I try to add the antennas I need and not pepper the entire ship with every and all available antennas. This will go along way in figuring out which antennas are best for a particular mission set instead of hovering over each antenna in the VAB and trying to figure it out. I also like that you've added other antenna mods (ones I presume are common). I have no idea which antenna mods are the most common or if that even played into your decision to include them, but 2 other mods that I have that specifically add antennas deliberately for RT that were not included are ORIGAMI antennas and Antennas. Food for thought. Either way, as is this thing is gold.

I just added the Antennas for the mods that I use.  I'll look to adding more if there is interest. I've created a thread for discussion here as to not clutter this thread.

[gredawarha]

On 04/09/2016 at 8:44 PM, gredawarha said:

Hello fellow KPS players.

Been away from KSP for the summer, just loaded up and unsurprisingly loads of updates and out of date add ons.  Decided on a fresh install and added the latest remote tech, it's installed correctly as upon loading it shows a new (to me) pop up where you can configure the app but when I start a new sandbox game no matter how far I travel (farthest I have tried is Mun) I don't lose control.  Am I missing something?

Thanks for any help.

Managed to figure it out, seemed I had not copied over a working copy of Module Manager.

[Stone Blue]

@aluc24:

 

On 8/27/2016 at 6:00 PM, SilverlightPony said:

Option 1:  Use the flight computer to pre-program actions.

Option 2:  Turn off signal delay in the RT options (it's on another tab from the main options).

Option 3: Send a manned mission with the RC-L01 Remote Guidance Unit and required number of crew to the SOI where your rover is landed, so "THEY" can control it locally with no signal delay

[Diche Bach]

On 8/27/2016 at 6:20 AM, LN400 said:

Sorry if this has been brought up and explained before but:

On the flight computer panel there are two arrows in the upper left. Clicking those gives me a 2nd panel with the buttons:

Tgt.

Hdt.

Fine

alongside a slider labeled Wheel.

There are also these boxes

LAT

LON

Speed

Looking at the documentation https://remotetechnologiesgroup.github.io/RemoteTech/guide/comp/ I can't seem to find any reference to any of this. Is there a description of what all of the above is, how it works and how to use it?

 

Didn't see if anyone has responded to your question:

I don't use any of these features, but based on a cursory examination of the Flight Computer "2nd Pane" in-game . . . some or most of those buttons/functions have tool tips that show up when you hover your mouse over them. Based on those, this appears to be the pane for controlling rovers and/or planes . . . I guess just rovers cause it doesn't include any altitude functions.

[Zhetaan]

@aluc24:

Or if, after I've espoused my whole 'life is a journey, so enjoy the trip' philosophy, you've decided that I'm full of kowmulch, you can use this feature, which I only now learned existed:

Respects to @LN400 and @Diche Bach for pointing it out.  Just from looking at the buttons and what I can make out of the code, the way this works is that the mode shown lets you specify waypoints by latitude and longitude, select a speed, and set up your trip a waypoint at a time as you would with a GPS.  As a mostly blind guess, the Hdt. mode may let you do the same thing, but by picking a direction and a distance rather than a target coordinate, so it's more like a dead reckoning tracker--but I do not know yet because I am not at my KSP computer right now.  I'll get back to you on that.

 

Edit:  'Hdt.' is indeed a DR tracker, or acts along those lines.  You tell the rover to go a certain distance along a certain heading from its current position, and it will go there.  My test rover was just a RoveMax with a 1k battery, solar panel, DP-10, and four ruggedized wheels (two with motors off and two with steering off), so it may have been too torqued, but from that testing, it did seem that the steering PID needed a bit of tuning.  It tended to overcorrect.

'Fine' appears to tell the rover to go a certain distance while steering at a certain angle, though I admit that I did not play with it much.

Also bear in mind that unlike the 'BURN' and 'EXEC' buttons on the first page of flight computer controls, the rover 'DRIVE' command is to press enter in one of the input boxes (hint to the devs--a 'DRIVE' button would be less ambiguous).

Edited September 7, 2016 by Zhetaan

[FlyingCola]

So, is this mod going to survive the 1.2 update? I know that you are going to have to change a lot of things, but just curious. If so, how fast do you think it will be updated?

[Ald]

If I had to guess:

RT has pointing the dishes mechanics, which stock will not have. Big +1 for RT for me
RT has a flight computer, stock does not. +1
RT doesn't have such thing as signal strenght, that would be a cool thing if merged from stock in a good way
RT has signal delay - if you want to punish yourself with remote control on anything further than Kerbin SOI
Perhaps some tweaking in dish antennas to have relay compatibility
Rewriting big chunks of code, to use stock API for communication mechanics, while keeping the callsign features of RT
And keeping it unforgiving for not deploying antennas in time or messing up with the range. That is the thing I love the most +999(9)

As for me, this is a no brainer. I adore RT and pretty much refuse to play without the mentioned behaviour

Also I have those wild, wild dreams of integration between RT and Kerbinside ground tracking station bases (only way to emulate it with a hardcoded custom config atm). That would make the communication pretty complete for now (unless some wilder dreams appear).
 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2016 by Ald
forgot about delay

[Poodmund]

1 hour ago, Ald said:

RT doesn't have such thing as signal strenght, that would be a cool thing if merged from stock in a good way

Well it does but its a hard 0% or 100%. What stock is implementing is that a lower Signal Strength doesn't impede control but Science Amount transmissions are reduced. Occlusion however is a feature of both.

[Dunbaratu]

What is the future plan for this mod post-KSP 1.2?  Ideally I'd like to see an RT where its features are implemented *on top of* stock's system, rather than implemented "instead of" it.  Especially as that will reduce the work for other mods (like kOS) trying to be compatible with RT.  It would be pretty clunky to have to write 4-condition code that says "okay, if stock radio connectivity is disabled and RT isn't installed, do this, else if stock radio connectivity is enabled but RT isn't installed do this, else if stock radio connectivity is disabled but RT is installed do this else if both stock radio connectivity is enabled and RT is installed do this..."

For example, rIght now RT provides an API call that other mods like kOS can call to ask "is this ship connected and controllable?".  Presumably stock radios will have the same thing but a different API call.  Having to write code in kOS to flip which version to call depending on what's been installed and enabled would be kind of messy and error-prone.  Whereas if RT took the philosophy of saying "well, given that Stock now has its own "is it connected or not" system, we'll strip ours out and use its system instead, then layer our signal delay system (that stock does not have) on top of stock." -> that would make life a lot easier for the rest of us, although I understand it would be a heck of a lot of re-writing for RT

(That and I like stock's attitude about antenna range better - you can have a weak antenna on one end of the connection provided you have a stronger one on the other end - which is generally not the case in RT where you need a super powerful antenna on both ends.  In real world missions, the probes running on low power tend to have their weak transmissions compensated for by the fact that back on Earth there's a very sensitive receiver, and visa versa.  You reduce the need to launch a very heavy and power-hungry probe by instead placing all that power on the Earth-side of the comm system.)

 

Edited September 11, 2016 by Steven Mading

[Ald]

4 hours ago, Poodmund said:

Well it does but its a hard 0% or 100%. What stock is implementing is that a lower Signal Strength doesn't impede control but Science Amount transmissions are reduced. Occlusion however is a feature of both.

Ok so we stay with binary 1-0 signal presence. But why not to adapt the signal strength as a trully informative parameter? You'll know if you're reaching the limit of your vessels comm instruments, by watching the percents go down. It could just calculate the effective range, showing you when you'll pop out of range - leaving you enough time to do some preparations (such as sending a kOS program or leaving a set of maneuvers to the flight computer to be executed while you loose signal). Occulsion would be the only thing that would bust your signal from x% to 0%.

[FlyingCola]

I just want this mod to be updated for 1.2. It's just that it will probably take some time because of the changes that 1.2 will make

 

[Diche Bach]

As well done as this mod is, and as long as the list of contributors is in the OP, something tells me there is nothing to worry about post 1.2. They will reconfigure RemoteTech so that it continues to augment (not override or exempt) stock game.

But, just in case . . . I will definitely keep a 1.1.3 build installed because playing with this mod installed is just too much fun.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Diche Bach

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

must figure something out that is better than 1.2 or this will soon die out.

[How to: KSP]

10 minutes ago, TheGuyNamedAlan said:

must figure something out that is better than 1.2 or this will soon die out.

Don't worry alan I have reasons why this is better and more nicer than the stock kerbnet. Kerbnet doesn't have realistic signal delays. it's more exciting. If you are on the dark side kerb net unrealistically still gives you control but not all controls but remotetech is nicer.

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

Just now, How to: KSP said:

Don't worry alan I have reasons why this is better and more nicer than the stock kerbnet. Kerbnet doesn't have realistic signal delays. it's more exciting. If you are on the dark side kerb net unrealistically still gives you control but not all controls but remotetech is nicer.

ur the 1st one to call be by alan here on the forums. wow thx.

[How to: KSP]

Just now, TheGuyNamedAlan said:

ur the 1st one to call be by alan here on the forums. wow thx.

Ur welcome alan

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

1 minute ago, How to: KSP said:

Ur welcome alan

:DD

[How to: KSP]

2 minutes ago, TheGuyNamedAlan said:

ur the 1st one to call be by alan here on the forums. wow thx.

Hey alan how do u make ksp videos? if u help me I will reward everyone with knowledge, desirble knowledge

Edited September 12, 2016 by How to: KSP

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

2 minutes ago, How to: KSP said:

Hey alan how do u make ksp videos? if u help me I will reward everyone with knowledge, desirble knowledge

ok