official Stress out the Devs! (and KSP)

[DoctorDavinci]

So I did this ...... Hope it helps

3 modular mining rigs set up at the island airport ... each has 350 parts, 20 drills, 2 small ore processors, 2 large ore processors, 2 large deployable radiators, 6 medium deployable radiators, 4 small radiators, 24 large fuel cells, tons of lights and a bunch of Kerbals

Each mining rig splits into 4 mobile parts that can be driven to a new mining location and be reassembled

Here is the persistence file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a4lxbf1a78qe2bt/persistent.sfs?dl=0

Here is the craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h5p9xrd5c9mfko6/Mining Rig.craft?dl=0

Hotkeys are as follows:
1- Toggle Deploy Drills
2- Toggle Surface Harvesting
4- Toggle Radiators
6- Toggle Fuel Cells
8- Toggle Ladders
0- Toggle Fuel Converters (Lf+Ox)

 

[Cunjo Carl]

Alright, we have a resource cruncher! A few, in fact. These are the first time I've ever used mining parts outside their aesthetic functionality, so there was a lot to learn. I think it worked out well, though!
 

Mine Crawler

Spoiler

A 600 part mobile mining platform, with enough constant conversion to support 2 aerospikes

Each mk3 bay holds 40 large drills or 3 large ISRUs. Mini drills and ISRUs are up front for variety.               The Minecrawler gets most of its power from solar panels. It's environmentally friendly! Honest!!

Named after the monstrous mobile stripmining platforms of MDK, the Minecrawler can zip down the road at 20km/h, while harvesting and converting ore to fuel. It looks kinda silly in action, and very much like its namesake. The design includes 80 large drills and 40 mini drills, purely for the cute factor. It, unsurprisingly, handles like a 300 ton mobile mining platform.

Bound Actions
1. Toggle Drills   (You need to wait a long time to keep the large and mini drills in sink)
2. Toggle Drill Harvest
3. Toggle ISRU
4. Toggle Solar Panels
5. Toggle Active Cooling Panels
6. Toggle Fuel Cells
 

Reactor 6x4

Spoiler

A small, parts-efficient terrestrial mining platform converts constantly enough resources for 36 spiders and a spark.

Each section has 6 drills, 12 fuel cells, and 2 ISRUs, an ore tank and a thermal control system.                    No feet means the platform jumps up and down on the mining drills. Ride the bronco, Bill!

It's based off a fully self-sufficient 6-drill platform, 4 of which project from the central hub. This setup vastly simplifies creating action groups, which can otherwise be a bear for stock mining. To use up the fuel it makes, it has a little fountain of rockets on top, which is nice to watch. For almost 2 years, the fountains have all been shutoff for drought awareness out here in California; somehow seeing this makes me realize how much I miss them. Anyways! This craft blessedly small, and is the only one of these mining craft that runs on my system without LUDICROUS LAG. (emphasis intended).

Bound Actions
1. Toggle Drills  (They will lift you a meter or two in the air)
2. Toggle Drill Harvest  (You will bounce.)
3. Toggle ISRU #1
4. Toggle ISRU #2
5. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #1
6. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #2
7. Activate Preheat mode for ISRUs
8. Deactivate Preheat mode for ISRUs

Preheat mode turns on the Liq Fuel and Oxidizer conversion on all ISRUs, causing it to heat up much faster despite not effecting conversion rate. The ISRUs and fuel cells activate in sets so you can play around with different resource rates.

Reactor 6x6x6

Spoiler

A huge, parts-efficient terrestrial mining platform converts constantly enough resources for a skipper, 6 twitches and 36 spiders.

XL Landing gear was the key to make it not explode the runway on timewarp. It's a forest of wheels D:        After crashing 500+ fully fueled planes on this spot over the years, it'll fuel a skipper for life!

 

This setup was made for a rather anemic 7.5% Ore concentration (obtained by re-writing the seed). I was going back and forth about whether to build the mining platforms on Kerbin, or to fly elsewhere with (assumedely) better ore concentrations. I'm glad I decided to stick at the airstrip, because flying with this lag would be impossible. Inputs get eaten, and if you press too many buttons too quick, the game occasionally to crashes straight to desktop. This craft has 200:1 lag, so it would take 8 hours just to get to orbit!
Oh, the lag. I'm actually known for being inordinately patient, but even I found the lag nauseatingly trudging. It was especially painful given this craft had a lot of minor adjustmants required during design because KSP wanted to start it 10ft off the ground, and time warp made it sink underground only to jump out like a spring afterwards. I'm glad I finally found a solution to make the craft user friendly, but I paid for it dearly in waiting. It also turned out the lag was bad in vehicle assembly too! The original plan was to make the craft 8x6x8, which would allow it to maintain an entire mainsail at full thrust! However, most part changes were taking 20-30 seconds to come in to effect, so the careful alignments just weren't working out. I fell back to the much easier 6x6x6, which given the lag outside was probably for the best in any case! Still, a permanent mainsail. Ooh, it sounds enticing.

Bound Actions (same as Reactor 6x4)
1. Toggle Drills
2. Toggle Drill Harvest
3. Toggle ISRU #1
4. Toggle ISRU #2
5. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #1
6. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #2
7. Activate Preheat mode for ISRUs
8. Deactivate Preheat mode for ISRUs

Preheat mode turns on the Liq Fuel and Oxidizer conversion on all ISRUs, causing it to heat up much faster despite not effecting conversion rate. The ISRUs and fuel cells activate in sets so you can play around with different resource rates.

Superluminal Submersible

Spoiler

A pair of empty airliner wings attached to an NCS nose cone spontaneously combust when facing upright underwater. Hilarity ensues.

This zippy little submersible sends itself to the ocean floor, where it detaches everything but the wings.         Then we're in space! It only happens one time in four now, for some reason.

 

   When you press space, everything drops off but the big wings and the fuselage, which slowly twist themselves upright and.... BANG! You're in space. :-D

   Before ending physics, the wings quickly jitter as if being oscillated by a mysterious, never before seen Kraken. I didn't know Krakens liked the ocean, I thought they were only found in deep space . Anyways, the effect only happens if the wings are empty, suggesting the mass is enough to damp out whatever it is (or just keep it sub- ε ). This photo isn't going superluminal, because it was impossible to get a good shot of Kerbin on those! I went with a slower one for picture composition's sake. In my original creation of this craft (in another file), I got 50% repeatably, but with this nearly identical copy it's down to 25%. I think the way it approaches verticality matters greatly. Much to my delight, the debug menu lists the wings/fuselage as "burning up", suggesting they go superluminal while still within KSP physics, and burn up while underwater due to the sheer velocity. Is that how it really works? I don't know, but I like it enough to keep it.

Instructions
The plane launches vertically from the launch pad (closer to the water). Just press z+space and it'll takeoff before toppling, no trouble. Fly it like normal, but be sure to cut the throttle by 300m/s, or you'll be waiting forever for it to slow back down. When you find a nice spot to dive, press space to deploy the parachutes and drift slowly down into the water, nose first. Immediately upon touching the water, press z to start submersing. When you get near the bottom, gently ease off the throttle about 10-20% to slow down and contact the ground, and you can quick save. Press space to release the engines, and enjoy the cosmos!

Save File Download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4VfTCvq4M80MDIzVzJWenpFV1U
This has all 15 ships since the original post. Let me know if more instructions are needed!
 

@DoctorDavinci  Those mobile mining platforms look awesome! The silouhette reminds me of a purple sailor jellyfish somehow. Anyways, it's always nice to see the Dr. Davinci trademark blanketed red lighting. EDIT: It was actually the Velalla I was thinking of, and they look awesome in person. With 15 modules looming around the beach it'll be the spittin' image. Good luck and hang in there with the lag~!

@Castille7 What are you going to build in there!? If you wind up continuing the project, I'd love to see more.

 

Edited August 22, 2016 by Cunjo Carl
Editted in a reply because a whole post would be off-topic. Probably? Overthinking it maybe.

[DoctorDavinci]

5 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

Alright, we have a resource cruncher! A few, in fact. These are the first time I've ever used mining parts outside their aesthetic functionality, so there was a lot to learn. I think it worked out well, though!
 

Mine Crawler

  Reveal hidden contents

A 600 part mobile mining platform, with enough constant conversion to support 2 aerospikes

Each mk3 bay holds 40 large drills or 3 large ISRUs. Mini drills and ISRUs are up front for variety.               The Minecrawler gets most of its power from solar panels. It's environmentally friendly! Honest!!

Named after the monstrous mobile stripmining platforms of MDK, the Minecrawler can zip down the road at 20km/h, while harvesting and converting ore to fuel. It looks kinda silly in action, and very much like its namesake. The design includes 80 large drills and 40 mini drills, purely for the cute factor. It, unsurprisingly, handles like a 300 ton mobile mining platform.

Bound Actions
1. Toggle Drills   (You need to wait a long time to keep the large and mini drills in sink)
2. Toggle Drill Harvest
3. Toggle ISRU
4. Toggle Solar Panels
5. Toggle Active Cooling Panels
6. Toggle Fuel Cells
 

Reactor 6x4

  Reveal hidden contents

A small, parts-efficient terrestrial mining platform converts constantly enough resources for 36 spiders and a spark.

Each section has 6 drills, 12 fuel cells, and 2 ISRUs, an ore tank and a thermal control system.                    No feet means the platform jumps up and down on the mining drills. Ride the bronco, Bill!

It's based off a fully self-sufficient 6-drill platform, 4 of which project from the central hub. This setup vastly simplifies creating action groups, which can otherwise be a bear for stock mining. To use up the fuel it makes, it has a little fountain of rockets on top, which is nice to watch. For almost 2 years, the fountains have all been shutoff for drought awareness out here in California; somehow seeing this makes me realize how much I miss them. Anyways! This craft blessedly small, and is the only one of these mining craft that runs on my system without LUDICROUS LAG. (emphasis intended).

Bound Actions
1. Toggle Drills  (They will lift you a meter or two in the air)
2. Toggle Drill Harvest  (You will bounce.)
3. Toggle ISRU #1
4. Toggle ISRU #2
5. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #1
6. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #2
7. Activate Preheat mode for ISRUs
8. Deactivate Preheat mode for ISRUs

Preheat mode turns on the Liq Fuel and Oxidizer conversion on all ISRUs, causing it to heat up much faster despite not effecting conversion rate. The ISRUs and fuel cells activate in sets so you can play around with different resource rates.

Reactor 6x6x6

  Reveal hidden contents

A huge, parts-efficient terrestrial mining platform converts constantly enough resources for a skipper, 6 twitches and 36 spiders.

XL Landing gear was the key to make it not explode the runway on timewarp. It's a forest of wheels D:        After crashing 500+ fully fueled planes on this spot over the years, it'll fuel a skipper for life!

 

This setup was made for a rather anemic 7.5% Ore concentration (obtained by re-writing the seed). I was going back and forth about whether to build the mining platforms on Kerbin, or to fly elsewhere with (assumedely) better ore concentrations. I'm glad I decided to stick at the airstrip, because flying with this lag would be impossible. Inputs get eaten, and if you press too many buttons too quick, the game occasionally to crashes straight to desktop. This craft has 200:1 lag, so it would take 8 hours just to get to orbit!
Oh, the lag. I'm actually known for being inordinately patient, but even I found the lag nauseatingly trudging. It was especially painful given this craft had a lot of minor adjustmants required during design because KSP wanted to start it 10ft off the ground, and time warp made it sink underground only to jump out like a spring afterwards. I'm glad I finally found a solution to make the craft user friendly, but I paid for it dearly in waiting. It also turned out the lag was bad in vehicle assembly too! The original plan was to make the craft 8x6x8, which would allow it to maintain an entire mainsail at full thrust! However, most part changes were taking 20-30 seconds to come in to effect, so the careful alignments just weren't working out. I fell back to the much easier 6x6x6, which given the lag outside was probably for the best in any case! Still, a permanent mainsail. Ooh, it sounds enticing.

Bound Actions (same as Reactor 6x4)
1. Toggle Drills
2. Toggle Drill Harvest
3. Toggle ISRU #1
4. Toggle ISRU #2
5. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #1
6. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #2
7. Activate Preheat mode for ISRUs
8. Deactivate Preheat mode for ISRUs

Preheat mode turns on the Liq Fuel and Oxidizer conversion on all ISRUs, causing it to heat up much faster despite not effecting conversion rate. The ISRUs and fuel cells activate in sets so you can play around with different resource rates.

Superluminal Submersible

  Reveal hidden contents

A pair of empty airliner wings attached to an NCS nose cone spontaneously combust when facing upright underwater. Hilarity ensues.

This zippy little submersible sends itself to the ocean floor, where it detaches everything but the wings.         Then we're in space! It only happens one time in four now, for some reason.

 

   When you press space, everything drops off but the big wings and the fuselage, which slowly twist themselves upright and.... BANG! You're in space. :-D

   Before ending physics, the wings quickly jitter as if being oscillated by a mysterious, never before seen Kraken. I didn't know Krakens liked the ocean, I thought they were only found in deep space . Anyways, the effect only happens if the wings are empty, suggesting the mass is enough to damp out whatever it is (or just keep it sub- ε ). This photo isn't going superluminal, because it was impossible to get a good shot of Kerbin on those! I went with a slower one for picture composition's sake. In my original creation of this craft (in another file), I got 50% repeatably, but with this nearly identical copy it's down to 25%. I think the way it approaches verticality matters greatly. Much to my delight, the debug menu lists the wings/fuselage as "burning up", suggesting they go superluminal while still within KSP physics, and burn up while underwater due to the sheer velocity. Is that how it really works? I don't know, but I like it enough to keep it.

Instructions
The plane launches vertically from the launch pad (closer to the water). Just press z+space and it'll takeoff before toppling, no trouble. Fly it like normal, but be sure to cut the throttle by 300m/s, or you'll be waiting forever for it to slow back down. When you find a nice spot to dive, press space to deploy the parachutes and drift slowly down into the water, nose first. Immediately upon touching the water, press z to start submersing. When you get near the bottom, gently ease off the throttle about 10-20% to slow down and contact the ground, and you can quick save. Press space to release the engines, and enjoy the cosmos!

Save File Download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4VfTCvq4M80MDIzVzJWenpFV1U
This has all 15 ships since the original post. Let me know if more instructions are needed!
 

@DoctorDavinci  Those mobile mining platforms look awesome! The silouhette reminds me of a purple sailor jellyfish somehow. Anyways, it's always nice to see the Dr. Davinci trademark blanketed red lighting.

@Castille7 What are you going to build in there!? If you wind up continuing the project, I'd love to see more.

 

That one is incomplete ... I'll be uploading the finished monster later this evening

It sits somewhere around 1130 parts fully assembled and has 15 modules ... All of which are mobile

[DoctorDavinci]

Made from 1130 of the finest parts in the Kerbal universe, I now present for your approval the CANUKWorks Modular Mining Rig Mk2 ... There are 3 placed in close proximity to each other (within 200m) at the island airport each with 38 Kerbals onboard (114 in total) and 36 drills IIRC (108 in total)

Each mining rig splits into 15 separate crafts (45 in total) that can be reassembled back together in differing configurations as well as combining them together to make an even more monstrous drilling beast

Save file can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/osmwydcjtgcqdtp/MINING RIG Mk2 x3 on island.sfs?dl=0

Craft file can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qf0br96yv1cu690/Mining Rig Mk2.craft?dl=0

Hotkeys are as follows:
1- Toggle Deploy Drills
2- Toggle Surface Harvesting
4- Toggle Radiators
6- Toggle Fuel Cells
8- Toggle Ladders
0- Toggle Fuel Converters (Lf+Ox)

 

Edited August 22, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[Papa_Joe]

Now that is a rig.   I'll have to see if my equipment can handle it...

 

[NathanKell]

Apologies. I have not had a chance to pore every post in the thread.

 

Has anyone posted a pure-stock save with a resource mining base with multiple craft doing resource mining in a small area?

And/or one craft with many drills and converters?

[Cunjo Carl]

4 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

Apologies. I have not had a chance to pore every post in the thread.

Has anyone posted a pure-stock save with a resource mining base with multiple craft doing resource mining in a small area?

And/or one craft with many drills and converters?

   Welcome! Should have some good ones for you on that front. If you need tweaks or changes, let us know.

   For multiple craft in a small area, I'd go with @DoctorDavinci's latest:  Link to post    Link to Save           Link to Craft     

   For many drills on a single craft, I'd go with my Reactor 6x6x6:             Link to post    Link to Save+Crafts

 

[Castille7]

@Castille7 What are you going to build in there!? If you wind up continuing the project, I'd love to see more.

@Cunjo Carl My goal is for it to be another refuel station without all the elaborate components like Omega 7, something with only necessary equipment needed for refueling craft. I like the looks of a spacedock and docking into one should be exciting, I like the precision maneuvers involved. I plan to reduce the size, anything over 1,500 parts is really unnecessary to enjoy KSP. I was planning size reduction I just have not got back to that project yet.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Castille7

[steuben]

14 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Has anyone posted a pure-stock save with a resource mining base with multiple craft doing resource mining in a small area?

And/or one craft with many drills and converters?

how many is many? 

[Mycroft]

You guys wanna find ways to stress out KSP, then check out Danny2462's latest video: 

 

[Cunjo Carl]

14 hours ago, steuben said:

how many is many? 

So far, I've got a craft with 216 large drills, and @DoctorDavinci has several craft totaling 108 large drills distributed in a small area. The raw number can be ramped up just by flying out more ships (for Dr.Davinci) or imposing another layer of symmetry for me, but the lag is already hard and heavy in both cases. That said, if you've got another craft for the pile, we'd love to see it- the more the merrier!

For untromped ground, no one's done anything with ISRUs off planet yet. It's just a guess, but I imagine that suddenly gobbling up the mass of a tiny asteroid (class A) with high ore content (95%) using a couple dozen preheated drills would be an amusing Dev stresser. It'd be an asteroid one moment and Swiss cheese the next! Who knows, though. Cheers!

 

[steuben]

hmm... that gives me a couple of ideas. <evil laugh> <evil laugh> <hack> <hack> <cough>

Yeah... if I can figure something out that doesn't have 4000 parts.

[Stoney3K]

On 23/07/2016 at 3:15 AM, NathanKell said:

Let me make this 100%, absolutely, positively clear. NO MODS.

 

That is not a judgment; I love playing modded. That's not even a statement about whether Squad "supports" mods; I invite you to look at our record, and all the stuff we've added recently just for mods. But we have some very specific goals for this, and mods will break those goals.

 

Further, I want to emphasize stock save files. We want save files with, say, a whole colony of mining vessels, dozens of vessels in various orbits, as well as high part count ships. High part count vessels are comparatively trivial to make, it just takes cloning stacks. Multi-vessel saves, however, are not trivial.

Isn't it possible to just generate a crapton of identical vessels on rails in the same orbit? Or do you need the vessels to be different, controllable, and moderately sensibly designed?

[DoctorDavinci]

19 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

For untromped ground, no one's done anything with ISRUs off planet yet. It's just a guess, but I imagine that suddenly gobbling up the mass of a tiny asteroid (class A) with high ore content (95%) using a couple dozen preheated drills would be an amusing Dev stresser. It'd be an asteroid one moment and Swiss cheese the next! Who knows, though. Cheers!

 

What a brilliant idea ... throw some Kraken Tech into the equation and me thinks it'll stress the devs pretty good

I'm on it like a fat kid on a smartie (no offence to all the fat kids out there as I love smarties too)

I have my project for the evening ... great idea Cunjo Carl, I'll post my results later in a few hours

Edited August 25, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[ProtoJeb21]

I found a physics bug the same day Danny2462 uploaded his most recent video. If you are going fast enough through the atmosphere of a planet, get stuck inside an inflatable heat shield, and use physics warp to get out, you will turn your Kerbal into a giant string of...things that's about the size of Kerbin.

Here's the Imgur album where I got the bug. I purposely recreated it on KIC 7848638 b after getting it on the planet 99d from Kumar's Dwarf Stars.

[DoctorDavinci]

48 minutes ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

I found a physics bug the same day Danny2462 uploaded his most recent video. If you are going fast enough through the atmosphere of a planet, get stuck inside an inflatable heat shield, and use physics warp to get out, you will turn your Kerbal into a giant string of...things that's about the size of Kerbin.

Here's the Imgur album where I got the bug. I purposely recreated it on KIC 7848638 b after getting it on the planet 99d from Kumar's Dwarf Stars.

Interesting .. What is more interesting is that it was asked that unmodded installs be used for this challenge but there are people who think that posting a modded install situation is acceptable

Good job

EDIT: In case you missed it, my comment above is seething with sarcasm

Edited August 25, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[ProtoJeb21]

8 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Interesting .. What is more interesting is that it was asked that unmodded installs be used for this challenge but there are people who think that posting a modded install situation is acceptable

Good job

Well, I do have a Kerbin-based test planned for tomorrow. Let's hope my OS survives the rise of the Kraken...

 

[NathanKell]

@Cunjo Carl @DoctorDavinci Looked at the saves and craft in question. I think I'd best specify a bit better.

Sadly, >500 parts (and probably >1000 parts in total in physics range) does not lead to enough FPS in the Unity editor to be useful in profiling. Also, the part that I really need isn't in the saves (AFAIK given the descriptions). So let me try to narrow down:

1. a 300 part single vessel which has multiple drills, converters, fuel cells, and radiators.

2. A close cluster of 3 or so 100-200 part vessels (or 5 50-100 part vessels, say) with the above.

3 (most important bit) actually placed where they are drilling resources and converting well, preferably on a place like Mun or Minmus but a larger place also works. A full-up in-action save, if you will.

In fact, other vessels in the save's persistence are fine, the idea is to get a good sample of actual in-use ISRU but at the stressier end than a single one-or-two-drill vessel.

 

Does that make mores sense? Thanks again.

[Cunjo Carl]

14 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Does that make mores sense? Thanks again.

 

For sure! Happy to help. I'm starting to understand. It seems you have a specific benchmark test in mind and your design rules definitely help! There's a piece I'm missing though, which may still cause a miss-step. What are we hoping to see in the high resource conversion case that we wouldn't see in the low? In any case, I'll probably have you a ship to-spec near the end of the weekend.

 

@DoctorDavinci How went the asteroid devouring? I'm totally curious. Well, my plan for the latest customer spec is to send up a 4-core (60part each) craft up to Minmus with the ability to decouple and split the cores to try and hit both functions 1 and 2 in a single craft (just to save time). Given this is apparently for benchmarking, I'm sure having a couple similar-but-different designs will be very handy for cross checking. Pleasantly, our design styles are wildly different, so assuming you're planning to drop by Minmus, I'm looking forward to seeing the CANUKWorks design!

I've checked through about 20 game seeds, and have come up with these two nice ones. My hope was to find a seed that allows us to get good conversion rates on Minmus without deprecating our earlier Kerbin-based designs. To change your game seed, go to your save's folder, and open persistent.sfs (using notepad or such). Find "GameSeed" and swap the number as follows.

            GameSeed = 19609448
This seed has ~80% ore on a large equatorial flat on Minmus, and 7.5% at KSC.

            GameSeed = 19609447
This seed has ~90% ore on many slopes terrains on Minmus, and 4.5% at KSC.

I'll probably be going for the '48 game seed. It was, ironically, my starting seed. Lucky me! If you happen to hunt and find a better one, let me know. Cheers!
 

Edit: I scratched out the numbers in the bus, and a 300-ish part craft on Minmus won't convert any faster than the 1050part "Reactor 6x6x6" on Kerbin. It'll be way less laggy, though!

Edited August 26, 2016 by Cunjo Carl
Small update

[Mycroft]

So I built this 500 or so part armored personnel carrier, and while the vehicle on its own doesn't stress KSP out, I noticed something odd while testing the armor. I crashed a plane into it, overheating some of the armor near the back, and suddenly, the game slowed to an absolute crawl. It went away once the overheat did, leaving me with questions and no answers. Here's the link: https://kerbalx.com/Mycroft_33/Armored-Personnel-Carrier

[NathanKell]

13 hours ago, Cunjo Carl said:

 

For sure! Happy to help. I'm starting to understand. It seems you have a specific benchmark test in mind and your design rules definitely help! There's a piece I'm missing though, which may still cause a miss-step. What are we hoping to see in the high resource conversion case that we wouldn't see in the low? In any case, I'll probably have you a ship to-spec near the end of the weekend.

@DoctorDavinci

 

The point isn't the ship, any of us can slap together a ship with a bunch of parts. The point is the save. Actually having time to get the ship to a good resource spot (ascent, transfer, landing, etc), getting it all set up, verifying it works...that takes time. The reason for good reasource coverage is so the amounts transferred on the resource network are actually high.

[Sharpy]

Okay, my entry. Behold: The Quilt.

An experiment in implementing Cloth Physics through Stock KSP construction.

 

The results are interesting.

[DoctorDavinci]

On 2016-08-26 at 3:02 AM, Cunjo Carl said:

How went the asteroid devouring? I'm totally curious.

My design has some flaws as KSP doesn't like it when I use multiple claws spread apart from each other on Kraken Tech swing arms ... still working out the gremlins, but until then I decided to design something from the ground up that met the new requirements .... I call it the CANUKWorks Tendril

Consisting of 110 parts, you are able to connect multiple Tendril's together to create a larger drilling beast ... The Tendrils of the Kraken

10 drills, 8 Fuel Cells, 8 Small Thermal Control Systems, 2 Medium Thermal Control Systems and 1 Converto-Tron 250 ... It also has 4 LV-909 Terriers on it that enable it to fly around in low gravity

HOTKEYS:
1- Toggle Drill
2- Toggle Surface Harvester
4- Toggle Radiators
6- Toggle Fuel Cells
8- Toggle Converter (Lf+Ox)
0- Toggle Antenna

@NathanKell - Hope this helps: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wkpu1p4cxitnozu/Stress Out The Devs.sfs?dl=0

In the save file there are 3 locations where I have placed Tendrils
Location 1 surface Ore Concentration - 6.7% approx ... 3 Tendrils joined together
Location 2 surface Ore Concentration - 9.4% approx ... 3 Tendrils joined together
Location 3 surface Ore Concentration - 9.4% approx ... 3 Tendrils side by side on a slope

 

Edited August 29, 2016 by DoctorDavinci

[Cunjo Carl]

@DoctorDavinci  Rock!

Unfortunately, I wound up thinking that the orbital scanner's ore percents were concentration percents and not... concentration tenths of percents, I guess they are? Anyways, the different scales caused me to lose a bunch of time on a bad design. It felt very Mars Climate Orbiter... Got there in the end, though! Sadly, the designs are non-seperateable at the moment, but I can add the functionality back in if desired. Both craft are designed for 7-8% ore concentration.
 

Lockness         Save name: Lockness  --  Steadystate Running             308 parts:  80 drills, 24 ISRU, 120 fuel cells, 16 active coolers.         Steadystate refining rate: 8.5 Fuel, 10.5 Ox          Burst refining rate: 28 Fuel, 30 Ox           Bound Actions:         1. Toggle Drill         2. Toggle Drill Harvest         3. Toggle Fuel Cells                4. Toggle Active Cooling         5. Toggle ISRU LF+Ox         6. Toggles both ISRU LF & Ox (Burst refining rate)         7-0. Various           * I know it's "Loch Ness", but the k felt more Kerbal

Reactor 6x3x3          Save name: Reactor 6x3x3  --  Steadystate Running          240 parts:  56 drills, 12 ISRU, 112 fuel cells, 9 active coolers         Steadystate refining rate: 6.2 Fuel, 7.6 Ox         Burst refining rate: 21 Fuel, 25 Ox         Bound Actions:                1. Toggle Drills  (They will lift you a meter or two in the air)         2. Toggle Drill Harvest  (You will bounce, it's fun.)         3. Toggle ISRU #1         4. Toggle ISRU #2         5. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #1         6. Toggle Fuel Cell Set #2         7. Activate ISRU LF & Ox (Burst refining rate)         8. Deactivate ISRU LF & Ox (Steadystate refining rate)

You can access both crafts prewarmed and running in the persistent file, or from save "01  Mining Craft Running" . The named save files above just have focus on the craft already. Also, pardon the bound actions are different! I was designing in a rush.

As a note for Lockness, if you open up any fuel tank on top (eg. on Nessy's neck) it'll actually reduce the "Conditions Met" of the engines, even if the engines have plenty of fuel in the tanks they're attached to. If you full throttle the engines, it looks like opening either LF or Ox on a tank 'throttles' the engine with this effect, and opening both throttles it even more! It's an odd one.

As a note for Reactor, there's a couple other designs of different sizes (larger and smaller) that also have saves available. Look for any save with the "  --  Steadystate Running" title.

Link to save: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4VfTCvq4M80Wkdscy1pWTRqeG8

Edited August 29, 2016 by Cunjo Carl

[amunray]

Anyone thought about that youtuber "Danny24..."?

He certainly helps discovering glitches, and worshipping the kraken.