Inconsistent mass ratios between SMURFF, MFT and IFS

[raxo2222]

I found something little weird:

I think MFT is unbalanced comparing to IFS - all I did was copying and pasting resources so MFT tank would contain newer KSPI resources.

Procedural part tank with MFT doesn't change mass ratio when changing size.

Also SMURFF has its own ideas for mass ratios of stock resources.

Liquid Fuel, Liquid Fuel/Oxidizer, Oxidizer and Monopropellant: 1:25 - 1:33 mass ratio - 96% - 97% of fuel tank mass is fuel.

Xenon - 1:10 -  90% of mass is fuel

Ore - 1:20 - 95% of mass is fuel

It needs to be single mass ratio for any fuel/propellant - it shouldn't matter if tank is defined by MFT, SMURFF, RealFuels or IFS.

Dry masses of tanks could have a multiplier - for RSS it would be 1 and for stock it could be some bigger number to balance DV.

Here is for example liquid fuel and hydrogen tanks:

Procedual part with MFT: 1:9, 1:1.61

Interstellar fuel tank: 1:8, if smallest tank could hold it, same for hydrogen.

and SMURFF be like: fuel mass ratio for liquid fuel is something like 1:25, for hydrogen 1:2 - 1:3

It seems like someone with good config modding skills should make confings for SMURFF, MFT and IFS, so they had consistent mass ratios across these 3 mods.

[raxo2222]

I really don't know where to suggest this:

To SMURFF dev @Kerbas_ad_astra or IFS dev @FreeThinker or MFT dev @taniwha...

It seems like there is schizophrenia going on between MFT/IFS tank (MFT tanks have different mass ratios than IFS ones), and SMURFF that rebalanced stock resource mass ratios doesn't help it either - IFS and MFT are balanced on stock mass ratios, at least on procedual part tank, even if you install SMURFF

SMURFF increases mass ratios so you can actually reach orbit using stock parts for RSS.

[FreeThinker]

Yes it would be a good idea if we could create some balance / reality consistency.

[raxo2222]

There would be 4 compability modes:

IFS and SMURFF only: tanks with IFS have real life mass ratios.

IFS and MFT only: MFT tanks have same mass ratios as low end KSPI tanks.

All tanks would be IFS tanks (mod tanks - MFT/IFS depending on other modders), only procedural tanks would be MFT ones to keep their malleability.

SMURFF and MFT only: mass ratios are improved with SMURFF, can hold multiple resources.

IFS, MFT and SMURFF: mass ratios are just like in real life, IFS and MFT tanks have same mass ratios if they hold same resource.

Every stock tank would be covered by IFS, procedural - only MFT as they are very malleable, and others would be MFT/IFS ones depending on other modders.

IFS would mean you can switch between any resource in same category once launched (gas/liquid/cryogenicliquid/solid), and MFT would mean ability to hold multiple resources in one part.

Really KSPI could contain only 3 classes of tanks: Gas, solid and liquid.

Internal structure doesn't change much, if you change between solids, liquids or gases - you can reuse argon tank as xenon tank, or dump all that depleted fuel outside and reuse now empty tank as ore tank.

Hydrolox/LFO/Methalox tanks should be switchable only between themselves, as they contains 2 tanks in one.

Mixing different classes of resources should make MFT tanks little less efficient - if you want to hold allumina, oxygen and liquid oxygen in same tank, you would actually to have put 3 tanks in one and some machinery lowering its mass ratio.

Since IFS is so strongly tied to KSPI, then all propellants except He3, as it needs much thicker walls than other cryogenic propellants (or make tank containing He3 banned from switching from/to that resource after launch) should be accessible to all fuel tanks.

Edited July 6, 2016 by raxo2222

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

MFT does its own mass calculations such that it ignores the "mass" variable (which is how SMURFF does its work).  I think I know how to tinker with it (using a new set of patches), but since I don't use it myself (and I'm not using SMURFF at all right now, since my 1.1.3 install is not stable enough yet to make one for RSS), it's not a priority to make the time to test and release.  There's also the matter that its patches are applied to specific parts, and while there are some general trends, lots of parts have overrides (so even if I adjusted e.g. the "Default" tank type, not all parts with that tank type would be affected, since many define their own independent baseMass).  This makes me even less inclined to add "support" for it to SMURFF, since the whole point of SMURFF is to avoid per-part configurations.

[raxo2222]

7 hours ago, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

MFT does its own mass calculations such that it ignores the "mass" variable (which is how SMURFF does its work).  I think I know how to tinker with it (using a new set of patches), but since I don't use it myself (and I'm not using SMURFF at all right now, since my 1.1.3 install is not stable enough yet to make one for RSS), it's not a priority to make the time to test and release.  There's also the matter that its patches are applied to specific parts, and while there are some general trends, lots of parts have overrides (so even if I adjusted e.g. the "Default" tank type, not all parts with that tank type would be affected, since many define their own independent baseMass).  This makes me even less inclined to add "support" for it to SMURFF, since the whole point of SMURFF is to avoid per-part configurations.

So @FreeThinker himself should set his IFS tanks to real/kerbal values for liquid fuel, oxidizer, LFO and monopropellant, if per part configs aren't avoidable.

So there shiuld be something like this:

No smurf - stock resources mass ratio is stock, smurf installed - then mass ratios are for RSS.

 

EDIT: Can you make MFT compatible with SMURFF then?

This way MFT tanks would have realistic mass ratios for stock resources.

Edited July 7, 2016 by raxo2222

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

On 7/7/2016 at 1:14 AM, raxo2222 said:

EDIT: Can you make MFT compatible with SMURFF then?

This way MFT tanks would have realistic mass ratios for stock resources.

It's doable, but I'll have to make more time to chase out a whole bunch of edge cases.  The default tank types are easy enough to modify, but then there are lots of parts which override the defaults, and they don't all do so in the same way.  There's a saying in project management that "the first 90% of a project takes up 90% of the time available, and the last 10% takes up the other 90%."  Since I don't use MFT myself, I haven't felt motivated to make that time investment to chase out the weird stuff.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

@raxo2222, I've decided not to add any material for MFT compatibility to SMURFF.  There are too many custom configurations to fit with SMURFF's approach of staying generic.  There would either be lots of parts left unpatched (especially among the stock parts, which I would not be willing to ship), or I'd have to duplicate MFT's configs and update them with more realistic masses.  This has already been done: it's called RealFuels, and it does come with tank definitions for stock resources in addition to the real ones.

[raxo2222]

On 31.07.2016 at 5:11 PM, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

@raxo2222, I've decided not to add any material for MFT compatibility to SMURFF.  There are too many custom configurations to fit with SMURFF's approach of staying generic.  There would either be lots of parts left unpatched (especially among the stock parts, which I would not be willing to ship), or I'd have to duplicate MFT's configs and update them with more realistic masses.  This has already been done: it's called RealFuels, and it does come with tank definitions for stock resources in addition to the real ones.

Its fine, so I guess I should use RealFuels instead of MFT

Edit: some mods doesn't work with RF :/

Edited August 1, 2016 by raxo2222