New Horizons Travelling Circus -- INTERLUDE: Everything is Broken

[Geschosskopf]

12 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

It should, yup

Cool

 

[BashGordon33]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

This has not been my experience.  For me, the bug happens repeatedly during the course of the same play session.  It only happens when I'm not looking at the ship (IOW, doesn't happen in the tracking station or to the active vessel).  For instance, put something in orbit, go to the VAB, design another ship to dock with the 1st one, put 2nd ship on launchpad, go to map view to target 1st ship, and 1st ship's orbit will have changed.  You can fix it's orbit, but as soon as you turn your back on it, it will change again.  When Geofrod and Ferrod made their 6 trips to John B, sloop, I did that all in 1 sitting and the station's orbit changed every time I looked away.

It was to fix this behavior that the experimental config was developed.  I'd rather not mess with that so have conceded everything between 70km and the edge of Kerbin's atmosphere to The Kraken.  Earth has the Van Allen Belts, NH Kerbin has The Kraken Belt   Other than not being able to have a station in Kerbin orbit, which is of limited value anyway, the bug causes no real harm.  Besides, it gives me an excuse to build a shipyard on Mun.

Check if this is the same bug. Uninstall NH and see if the bug is still there. This seems very different to the bug I found a workaround for. The first thing to do in bug checking is to re-download  the mods that you think that could be affecting the orbits, if that doesn't work, find the mods that are most likely causing an error, and systematically uninstall and reinstall (move them to a separate folder) each one until the bug doesn't occur. Try this and notify me when you find the mod that is causing the bug. 

[Cydonian Monk]

Considering the "things won't stay in orbit around Kerbin if Kerbin is a moon" bug has been there for several years now, I doubt redownloading all of the mods involved will solve it. (Though it can't hurt to try.) For whatever reason the game engine and the changes forced onto it by Kopernicus / PlanetFactory / etc don't always agree with each other when Kerbin isn't directly orbiting the Sun. 

Edit: I do wonder if the recent "orbital decay" fix isn't inadvertently unfixing something in this scenario.....

Edited July 15, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[Geschosskopf]

17 hours ago, BashGordon33 said:

This seems very different to the bug I found a workaround for. The first thing to do in bug checking is to re-download  the mods that you think that could be affecting the orbits,

I know how it goes.  I've been mashing bugs since the last days of punchcards 35 years ago.  I helped lay the foundation of what today is called the Internet.  I've alpha- and beta-tested more games than I can remember from that day to this, was even a game dev myself for a few years in there somewhere, and was on the KSP Experimental team up until about 2 years ago when my real job started taking up too much of my time.  Now I'm old and lazy so I prefer to take the easy way out.  I'll work with what I've got, which is quite workable, and let the energetic young'uns try to solve the problem

 

8 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Edit: I do wonder if the recent "orbital decay" fix isn't inadvertently unfixing something in this scenario.....

I wouldn't doubt it.  NH was apparently working fine prior to 1.1.3.  But OTOH, @NathanKell said that 1.1.3 reverted to the pre-1.1.2 situation viz orbit decay, so you'd think that would be a wash.

But personally, I don't really care.  If The Kraken wants Kerbin's orbital space, It can have it.  I have no need of it myself.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 7: The Walloping Window Blind

Spoiler

 

Having picked a spot for the Mun shipyard, there remained the matter of acquiring enough competent ratings to kerb it efficiently.  This necessitated a training cruise to Aptur led by Captain Bill, 3rd Baron MECO Point, and as many artificer strikers as could reasonably be crammed into something that might survive its eventual reentry.  The pod was an abhorrent conjunction of a 4-seat Lithobrake capsule and a Near Future backseat together holding a total of 10 souls with some Science! instruments wedged in between.  As usual, getting from Kerbin to Aptur was harder than it looked, but it went well enough for the huge, ungainly lander to hop biomes and finish off the Science! at this overgrown asteroid.  A combination of not using lander legs and instead using the recently invented KAS winches and harpoons solved the sliding problems Mitzor had encountered at Aptur during the first extra-Kerbin trip by the Circus.

Once they were down safely, Bill had his crew line up around the flag so he could take their picture for his memoirs.

It wasn't until all were safely home and Bill was tweaking the right-hand pic above to post on his KerbBook timelne that he noticed a certain Geofrod trying hard to be out of focus at the edge of the group.  Bill ragequit KerbBook.. Geofrod?!?!?!?  A junior sciencemate  What the pop?!?!?!?

 

Captain Bob, 1st Baron LKO (a particularly impoverished fief), meanwhile, was taking Gemrys out to Sonnah Station to do more MOLE experiments and assess MOLE's ability to farm Science!  The Sonnah Station Shuttle had repeats of 3 of the previous experiments plus one of the new ones.  Bob and Gemrys, as Geofrod and Ferrod had previously experienced,  would be here for a while.

 

About this time, MagSat Atell Mk 1 did its mid-course tweak to gravity brake off Eve.

 

Then it was time to launch Munbase Pathfinder, intended to do some on-site geoscience to improve the functioning of later Munbase additions.  This mission was led by Captain Bill again, accompanied by sciencemates Geofrod and Ferrod.

 

 

Soon the Munbase Pathfinder was on its final descent, this time in sunshine.  Mun, it happens, isn/t tide-locked to Sonnah.  The site chosen for the Mun shipyard, a sub-crater within the Highland Craters landing area, looked more intimidating in daylight than it had originally.  Good luck driving a rover out of there.  But it had everything a proper shipyard needed.

Munbase Pathfinder came down safely on the surprisingly level ground in the bottom of the sub-crater.

Once down, it was time to shuck the Dr. Jet's Chopshop retractable skycrane.  This had some Sepratrons attached so it wouldn't come straight back down on the base (aka Walloping Window Biind).  However, the limited up thrust necessary to lift the skycrane without lifting the Munb base wasn't enough to compensate for 3 Sepratrons, so the skycrane tumbled off horizontally until it hit the flag from the 2nd Mun Landing, at which point it was pointed directly back at the Munbase.

Fortunately, the Sepratrons died at that point and the impact with the flag tripped the skycrane more or less vertical, at which point its own engines took it up and up, much higher than its remaining fuel had led the Boffins to expect.

But eventually it ran out of fuel and came down in the desired gratuitous explosion.  It was just half-way around Mun from Munbase Pathfinder.

This all sorted out, Munbase Pathfinder drove away on its wheels to a point at a safe distance from the flag, which would of course be used by later base additions.  Once it was in what looked like a good spot, Bill pushed the button that jettisoned the wheels.

One of the wheels remained in the way of an inflating base unit so Bill, as the Boffin-in-Charge, went out and pushed it away.  He was disappointed he was unable to scrap any of the wheels for later use as component parts.  But that would, no doubt, be sorted out eventually.  For the nonce, he contended himself with inflating all the modules of Munbase Pathfinder.  Then he and his sciencemates moved into their new digs and Bill gave the order to commence work.

With nothing much to do at this point, Bill opened up his laptop, checked his emails, and played some of his namesake games.

Eventually, Bill noticed that his crew was slacking.

This brought about a horrible revelation....

Still, it's a nice base.  Geothermal power, room for a full crew, plenty of Snacks! 

 

 

Tune in next time to see how this gets sorted.

 

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Angelo Kerman]

Should have this sorted tomorrow once I'm back home. Meanwhile, fun to see your crew getting out for training and such.

[Geschosskopf]

46 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Should have this sorted tomorrow once I'm back home. Meanwhile, fun to see your crew getting out for training and such.

I'm so wrapped up in the coolness of the IVA plasma screens that I don't care  

[Mister Dilsby]

Yes! The 'Bill Space Program' cases! LOVE it!

 

[Geschosskopf]

25 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Yes! The 'Bill Space Program' cases! LOVE it!

Ain't it great?  The IVAs in @Angel-125's stuff are the ideal combo of awesome and hilarity

 

[Just Jim]

I'm not sure which I like more, "Bill Space Program", or that todo list on the clipboard!  

Edited July 18, 2016 by Just Jim

[Geschosskopf]

51 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

I'm not sure which I like more, "Bill Space Program", or that todo list on the clipboard!  

To me, the best part of the Pathfinder IVAs is the sticky note on the potted cactus, which says something along the lines of "Not a telescope". which immediately brings to mind images of Kerbals poking thorns into their own eyes

 

[Angelo Kerman]

10 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

To me, the best part of the Pathfinder IVAs is the sticky note on the potted cactus, which says something along the lines of "Not a telescope". which immediately brings to mind images of Kerbals poking thorns into their own eyes

 

Glad you like the humor.  Just remember, safety third.

[Geschosskopf]

Just now, Angel-125 said:

Glad you like the humor.  Just remember, safety third.

Yeah, I regret covering that up.  But there will be other opportunities to show that.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 8: Munbase Madhouse

Spoiler

 

Bill and his jolly crew settled down to do some geoscience Munoscience using the lab in Munbase Pathfinder (which now works thanks to a software update).  This involved taking a bunch of core samples and processing them to do things like improve the efficiency of drilling and refining.  While this was going on, Bob and Gemrys finished their batch of experiments at the Sonnah Station and came home.

 

 

Bob was correct---the Boffins hadn't modified the shuttle at all.  Thus, it was again a very near-run thing between slowing down enough to open the chutes and running out of altitude.  But at least now the problem had been verified by a nob so maybe now they'd do something about this.

 

Meanwhile, back on Mun, life had settled into baseboard routine.  There was a lot of downtime.

 

 

During this time, the sun came up briefly so the crew tidied up the area.  This involved gathering up all the wheels and stashing them in the powerplant for the future, and also installing the dish antenna so they could all get their reality shows.

 

After about 25 days, Geofrod and Ferrod had finally accomplished all they could with the core samples.  This completed the work of Phase I of the Munbase and it was time to start Phase II.  This involved getting an industrial stripminer and ISRU there and running to fuel further projects.  This involved 2 launches practically identical to Munbase Pathfinder, except for the payload.  And the payload was pretty much the same, too, just different inflatable modules around the edges and some detail improvements due to experience with the initial module and some slight increases in technology.

The 2 additions to the Munbase launched about 1 hour apart and maintained this spacing all the way to Mun so handling both at once was no problem.  It was either send them together or wait a month for the next transfer window, so the flotilla approach was chosen.

Once both were settled into orbits with about 10-15^ inclination, Munbase StripMine was sent down first.  This was crewed by Marllian and Philing.  By now it was pitch dark at the Munbase site again, but needs must.  Fortunately, there were enough lights to do the job.

Once down, Munbase StripMine let its skycrane go, drove over near Munbase Pathfinder, and shucked its wheels.

The skycrane and enough fuel to reach about 48km altitude and crashed on the reverse slope of a crater rim about 15km east of the Munbase.  It only had 1 Sepratron on the nosecone to avoid the tumbling previously experienced.

Soon, Munbase StripMine was in position and set up.

Next, it was the turn of Munbase ISRU, crewed by Jedley and Sara.  It hadn't gotten any lighter at the base site.

Munbase ISRU had had a more arduous passage to Mun so its skycrane had rather less fuel remaining than previously.  As such, they could only use a little bit of throttle when jettisoning it without lifting Munbase ISRU back off the ground,  As such, it didn't get very high and ended up crashing rather gently just 650m west of the base.  Only the nosecone exploded

But at least all components of Phase II were now in place and set up, so it was time to get to work.  Bill gave the orders.

Yes, the base as a whole didn't yet have a name, just the individual components and the phases.  This would never do.  So Bill put his otherwise unemployed sciencemates on the job.

---------

Due to the magic of Wild Blue Industries, the various base modules don't need physical connections.

Munbase Pathfinder has now become essentially a low-volume waterwell.  It has 4 small drills (which work better with Scientists) all supplying water, which makes up for the gradual consumption of the 3 geothermal power planets.  Its own geothermal plant powers these drills and has plenty of juice left over to make sure the other modules, which also have their own plants, never run short.  And the industrial-grade StripMine and ISRU  are making fuel so fast there's no need to warp when watching tanks fill.

So now it's time to put that fuel to good use, in exploring the rest of Mun.  That needs doing to get the technology needed to start building rockets on Mun.  So tune in next time for that.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[UnusualAttitude]

Nice little factory you have going there. However, I do hope that Marllian, Jedley, Philing, Sara, Geofrod and Ferrod get their five weeks of payed vacation and a thirty-five hour working week. Otherwise, you might have an Emile Zola situation on your hands...

"Des Kerbals poussaient, une armée verte, vengeresse, qui germait lentement dans les sillons, grandissant pour les récoltes du siècle futur, et dont la germination allait faire bientôt éclater Kerbin."
"Kerbals were springing forth, a green avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and their germination would soon overturn Kerbin."

[Geschosskopf]

18 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Nice little factory you have going there. However, I do hope that Marllian, Jedley, Philing, Sara, Geofrod and Ferrod get their five weeks of payed vacation and a thirty-five hour working week. Otherwise, you might have an Emile Zola situation on your hands...

They work port-and-starboard watches as is customary in His Majesty's service.  For 6 days shall they labor and do all they are able and on the 7th, holystone the deck and polish brightwork.  This goes on for the duration of the mission, except when it's all hands on deck for some special evolution.

All these hands are already institutionalized to this routine, thanks to being sent on other missions previously.  And so far they're enjoying a stretch of shore duty with its constancy.  No traumatic launches or "debriefings" for quite some time

 

 

[Angelo Kerman]

Nice to see your base up and running in more ways than one. A bit of trivia: The claw in the Hacienda was originally part of "The Foot," A part from Multipurpose Colony Modules (Pathfinder's predecessor) that grabbed onto asteroids.

[Geschosskopf]

10 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Nice to see your base up and running in more ways than one. A bit of trivia: The claw in the Hacienda was originally part of "The Foot," A part from Multipurpose Colony Modules (Pathfinder's predecessor) that grabbed onto asteroids.

I'm glad you were able to put an old model to good use.  The plush toy grabber is hilarious.

The new cut-away view has a lot of power to show off IVAs.  Using it, especially on something spread out like a base, and especially with the Camera Focus Changer mod, you can pan the camera around inside parts to get angles unavailable in normal IVA views.  I don't think there's any other way to see the plush toys on the floor in there, so I feel like I discovered an easteregg

The base seems to be working pretty well so far.  It's got excess capacity at the moment but that will be put to use (and more added) in Phase III when I start turning it into a shipyard.  I haven't been using fusion power because of the need to make fusion pelts, which requires a bit of preparation first.

[Geschosskopf]

EPISODE 9: A Hot Time in the Munbase Tonight

Spoiler

 

When we last left the Circus, the as-yet-unnamed Munbase was up and running in Phase II, making fuel to further exploration and kickstart R&D.  Mission Control decided the best way to use this would be to make a fairly long-ranged hopper lander that could hit several biomes on a tank of gas, return to the base to refuel, and repeat.  They thus designed the aptly named Munhopper for this purpose using a pair of the newly developed LV-N engines.  A new sciencemate striker, Megris, was chosen for the mission to season her up.

After an uneventful trip, Megris landed safely at the by-no well-vitrified LZ of the Munbase.

However, the expected magical flow of fuel from the base into the ship failed to occur.....

This resulted in some hacking.  Eventually, Megris lifted off to the NE and came down about 25km away in the Farside Crater, grabbing all the Science! she could find lying around.

From here, Megris went North up the canyon extending from the Farside Crater.  This contained not only the Canyon biome itself but also adjacent small patches of Midlands and, very surprisingly, Northwest Crater as well, so effectively 3 biomes for the price of one.  From there, Megris made a long hop to the Polar Crater and then returned to the Munbase on the last of her fuel.  5 biomes worth of Science! was a good haul for a single sortie and Megris was itching to get on with the rest.

--------------------

But as Megris began her final descent to the Munbase, several explosions erupted below.  She thought the base was shooting at her.

Alas, these explosions were not at all gratuitous.  Nor were they an ill-advised flak barrage or even celebratory gunfire.

Ensuing events are best told mostly by the Kerbals themselves, as relayed back to Kerbin by the security Science! cameras.

 

As Megris completed her landing, things at the base were going from bad to worse....

 

Marllian and Philing bailed out just in the nick of time.

 

As the fugitives ran away, the actual stripmining unit also exploded and the powerplant sprung a leak and deflated.

 

And then things went from worse to much worse....

 

 

Jedley and Sara joined Marllian and Philing in running for their lives towards Munbase Pathfinder's hab module.

 

Soon, the miracle of central A/C and the first aid training of the sciencemates had the four artificersmates cooled down and somewhat patched up.  Of course, a hearty meal was necessary to jumpstart the healing process.

 

Nothing else exploded for a while so it appeared that the immediate crisis had passed.  Now it was time to report home and start figuring out what to do next.

 

So there we are.  The Munbase finally has a name.

The remaining habitable base unit will hold all 8 of the Kerbals currently there but the quarters are quite cramped and the snacks (and especially the grog) will soon be running low.  Meanwhile, 5 biomes worth of Science! are sitting uselessly on the LZ and Mission Control is in a bad mood.  Meanwhile the Circus is still recovering from the sudden arrest of Bob.  Agents of His Majesty suddenly appeared at KSC and hauled him off to the Tower on charges of conspiracy (meaning I accidentally fired him).

Tune in next time for when the Circus tries to recover from these disasters.

 

 

Edited July 25, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Angelo Kerman]

Oh my, that's got to be the most hilarious bug report I've seen! I'm crying because I'm laughing so hard. This didn't used to happen prior to KSP 1.1.3 I'll put out an emergency patch to turn of all heating on the industrial converters until I can figure out what's going on. It shouldn't be doing that at all. How long were you away from the base?

[Geschosskopf]

13 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Oh my, that's got to be the most hilarious bug report I've seen! I'm crying because I'm laughing so hard.

Well, that's one way to look at it   I decided there was no way to sneak around this problem once it happened so I just went with it.  It adds a bit of drama to an otherwise boring mission report about grinding out biomes.  It was all a mad scramble trying to save as much as possible and I thought it made a ripping yarn.  The actual bug report is over in your thread.

 

13 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

This didn't used to happen prior to KSP 1.1.3 I'll put out an emergency patch to turn of all heating on the industrial converters until I can figure out what's going on. It shouldn't be doing that at all. How long were you away from the base?

This was with Pathfinder 0.9.32, which I installed just prior to starting this game session.  Prior to the last session, the base had no problems.  It had run for several game hours in my presence.  Then I quit the game, built the Munhopper and sent it out there.  That trip entailed waiting several days for a transfer window, then about 2 days of travel time.  The Munhopper arrived at the base and all was still fine, no heat, no explosions.  But the refueling didn't work, so I quit the game and asked about that.  Tried the MM patch you suggested and that didn't work, so I quit again and reported back on that.  Then I installed 0.9.32, took the Munhopper off on a tirp lasting a couple hours, and upon return, the base exploded. 

[Angelo Kerman]

1 minute ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, that's one way to look at it   I decided there was no way to sneak around this problem once it happened so I just went with it.  It adds a bit of drama to an otherwise boring mission report about grinding out biomes.  It was all a mad scramble trying to save as much as possible and I thought it made a ripping yarn.  The actual bug report is over in your thread.

 

This was with Pathfinder 0.9.32, which I installed just prior to starting this game session.  Prior to the last session, the base had no problems.  It had run for several game hours in my presence.  Then I quit the game, built the Munhopper and sent it out there.  That trip entailed waiting several days for a transfer window, then about 2 days of travel time.  The Munhopper arrived at the base and all was still fine, no heat, no explosions.  But the refueling didn't work, so I quit the game and asked about that.  Tried the MM patch you suggested and that didn't work, so I quit again and reported back on that.  Then I installed 0.9.32, took the Munhopper off on a tirp lasting a couple hours, and upon return, the base exploded. 

Well I know I didn't touch heating in 0.9.32, but KSP itself used to have a weird overheating bug that I presume was fixed in 1.0. You might've gotten bitten by that. If you could send me your logs I might be able to find out what happened. When you were there the last time and there were no explosions, did you have the drills running?

[Geschosskopf]

4 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Well I know I didn't touch heating in 0.9.32, but KSP itself used to have a weird overheating bug that I presume was fixed in 1.0. You might've gotten bitten by that. If you could send me your logs I might be able to find out what happened. When you were there the last time and there were no explosions, did you have the drills running?

As far as I know, the drills were running and the ISRU was making LF.

Here are the logs:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yxs5cnxsixxrpmk/Pathfinder Overheating.zip?dl=0

 

[Just Jim]

Wow... I really love how you were able to take what was obviously a serious, and dramatic, bug and work it into the story so well. 

[Geschosskopf]

16 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Wow... I really love how you were able to take what was obviously a serious, and dramatic, bug and work it into the story so well. 

Well, the story went totally off the script there    That was an actual emergency and it played out pretty much exactly as shown.  I was really expecting the whole thing to go up in smoke and Kerbals to pop immediately on going EVA.  I'm rather surprised the damage was as limited as it was.  Of course, that could well happen next time.

This seems to be a stock bug, not a Pathfinder problem, BTW.  @Angel-125 found a bug report for this same thing happening with stock parts.