Orbital Construction Facility

[Van Disaster]

47 minutes ago, Alshain said:

That's more than just adding a orbital construction facility.  That is adding an entirely new ISRU system.  It would have to be much more elaborate than it is now to not be overpowered.  There are mods that do this, but in stock the ISRU is for fuel only, not building materials.  Either that or you would have to ship the materials from Kerbin to construct in orbit, in which case, how is that different from sending the parts?

I don't think orbital ship spawning should be in stock without all the rest of an EPL style system, personally. Sending tanks of generic material to a station & converting that into a complex vessel is straining credulity as it is. However it's a load easier to send the raw materials for a bulky/awkward structure than it is to try and lift it complete.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Van Disaster

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

I don't think orbital ship spawning should be in stock without all the rest of an EPL style system, personally. Sending tanks of generic material to a station & converting that into a complex vessel is straining credulity as it is. However it's a load easier to send the raw materials for a bulky/awkward structure than it is to try and lift it complete.

I don't recognize the acronym, but I don't think orbital ship spawning should be in stock period.

[tater]

I would really like to see a robust construction ability off Kerbin. It would also serve to give Kerbals something to do in space. Have a VAF (vehicle assembly facility) that you have to build, then it needs to be supplied with parts. Small stuff can be bulk-loaded KIS style, but any large components would need to delivered in most cases. Certain structures might be available for actual construction from scratch on-orbit from pieces that could presumably fit in a bulk container of some kind. The VAF wouldn't look like the VAB, just because it would be cool to have it look like it's on a station. It would have unique limits. A similar facility for bases would be cool to have as well, including the ability to create certain kinds of base structures (which might be allowed to be constructed already attached to other facilities).

I like it, I see that as an actual use for a station.

Note that I see this as a way to more precisely build the sorts of things I already build on orbit. Say I flew up a crew module, and it had transduna injection stages and a transkerbin injection stage on top of that, and it was to be launched in 5 launches, and assembled. I can dock all those together, but trying to get it perfectly aligned rotationally at the docking ports is non-trivial. I'd love to be able to put each segment next to an orbital construction facility which would then grab them (it could have some robot arms that work like grabbers), then all those parts appear in a "VAF" and I assemble them, exactly aligning the parts, then poof, it gets done.

[SinBad]

So,

EPL : extraplanetary launchpads.  makes use of the stock isru mechanics with an extra step to make generic construction materials from ore. Allows orbital construction, as well as surface construction.

To add a layer of difficulty,

EPL + MKS lite (from the USI catalog): base parts and extended isru chain in a nice linear package. Surface and orbital. Replaces/disables some EPL models and mechanics.

One more up,

EPL + UKS (USI): same as MKS lite but with Roverdude's fully realised extended isru chain, as well as logistics mechanics that eliminate most of the grindy resupply flights. Very complex. Resource utilisation chains have branches, loops, byproducts, wastes, all of which go into something elses input.

For top notch brain melts,

EPL + UKS (USI) + USILS (USI) : adds life support to UKS. Open or closed loop (loop makes it sound so simple. 6 dimentional mobius strip maybe?), same room syndrome simulated as well. Bases and long range craft built with this installed become very complex as you try to find that sweet spot between deciding if 5 tons more supplies meets your needs better than 4.8 tons of life support recyclers. The only thing it doesnt do (yet) is generate new kerbals. But it does have a mechanic where a kerbal can train other kerbals star rating up to one level below their own.

But, once you have that 30 crew minmus mining/refining/parts factory/fuel plant built, and a shipyard in low (like 8k low) minmus orbit, the solar system is yours for the taking. All you have to do is ferry the ship crews out from kerbin, maybe spending a few months in an orbital acadamy first to train them up to 4 stars.

[Van Disaster]

3 hours ago, Alshain said:

I don't recognize the acronym, but I don't think orbital ship spawning should be in stock period.

EPL - Extraplanetary Launchpads. There's a lot of things I'd want stock before that.

@tater stock self aligning docking ports would be great. There's mods which do, but that sort of thing really should be built in.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Van Disaster

[tater]

Also flat out "welding" of parts. I can do this with KIS, but it's a pain, and a wrong move can get splodey. I am not interested in having a drill turn out spacecraft, myself, I want the ability to do some VAB-style assembly on orbit is all. The use of the facility can of course pre predicated on having EC, crew, etc. 

As pure eye-candy, it would be cool if construction took some decent amount of time, during which if you were to visit the station, you'd see the crew on EVA doing the construction

To be clear, I'm not in favor od a 1.25m part that magically poops out 3.75m interplanetary mother ships. I want all the supplies to be brought up in most cases as the size they are---though I could imagine certain new parts that could perhaps be collapsed in some way that are designed for orbital construction use 

[DesertPhoenix]

7 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

 There is at least one mod which will let you fly a mission once and buy the mission without having to fly it after that, which is what you seem to be looking for.

This would be perfect. I'll go have a look for it.

[Van Disaster]

11 hours ago, tater said:

Also flat out "welding" of parts. I can do this with KIS, but it's a pain, and a wrong move can get splodey. I am not interested in having a drill turn out spacecraft, myself, I want the ability to do some VAB-style assembly on orbit is all. The use of the facility can of course pre predicated on having EC, crew, etc.

KIS is as near as you'll get to live welding without something radical - other than KIS which is building a vessel outside the editor screens all else you can really do is merge parts, and there's big complications merging models ( colliders are a pain, have to work out the new CG etc ) which can be real minefields.

 

11 hours ago, tater said:

To be clear, I'm not in favor od a 1.25m part that magically poops out 3.75m interplanetary mother ships. I want all the supplies to be brought up in most cases as the size they are---though I could imagine certain new parts that could perhaps be collapsed in some way that are designed for orbital construction use 

If you're building a truss in space you need to carry angle-iron or similar, that's *vastly* less volume than a completed truss - similarily for things built of plate. Go a little beyond that and you can imagine carrying powdered material & extruding it in an orbital facility ( we're already doing this for some small things ). I do think there's some components which need either shipping preconstructed or a more complicated facility to construct, and we could probably simulate this with containers of some sort, but even if all you can do in space is weld stuff together, it's still going to be shipped in a container. Just need to devise something so you're not pulling large rabbits out of small hats.

[pandaman]

Taking inspiration from my own 'workshop' idea and largely from what @tater has been commenting above...

From a functionality point of view an orbital or other body assembly facility could work essentially the same way as the current VAB/SPH (with a different scene that matches the environment naturally), but it could only show in the part menu parts and assemblies that have been delivered to the 'workshop', which could also have limited storage capacity.

The Orbital scene would not need to show the inside of any 'workspace', as construction would be carried out in the open with crew animations, if included, being kerbals whizzing about like George Clooney in Gravity.  The scene for on other bodies could also be in the open with an 'improvised' VAB consisting of just gantries and scaffolding etc .

This way no new game assembly tools or functions need to be written, as the current editors already contain all that is needed.  In use, gameplay wise, it would be identical to the VAB/SPH, we would still get the VAB functions, but with the limitations that orbital and other body construction would be constrained by what parts you can get to the facility.  

[mk1980]

sounds a bit too sci-fi for my taste. the tech in KSP is on a similar level to what we have in reality. there's quite a bit of a gap between being able to assemble some prefabricated space station modules in space and building a whole star ship from scratch. even if we assume that the parts aren't manufactured in space but rather in factories/labs on the ground, it's still a bit too sci-fi. getting to orbit is not trivial enough (even at the end of the tech tree) to "handwave" it away and pretend that someone else transported all that stuff to the dock.

i mean, half the game is literally about getting stuff from KSC to space. if we consider that task so trivial that some unseen third party can do it reliably "in the background", i wonder what's the point of even playing any more. at that level of development, doing some orbital maneuvers etc. would be equally trivial, so the *other* half of what you do in the game might as well also be eliminated.

[tater]

Yeah, I see a difference between a facility to enable construction of prefab elements, and a scifi 3d printer in space.

[Van Disaster]

EL is a nice idea - it could be expanded to make things a little nearer what might be possible in the reasonably near future ( if we're going to expand our civilisation by mining asteroids & moons & whatever, we're not going to be sending everything we need from Earth or there'd be no point ). It does completely undersell the logistics though, I think, and I actually want to mess with that a bit.

However as mk1980 said, near & far future stuff is mod-land. Stock is rather pushing it with spaceplane stuff but at least one of the hardest bits of the Rapier has been demo'd & it's not *completely* a paper item.

[tater]

That's why I think a "workshop" approach, for an orbital facility makes more sense for stock. Just the ability to put parts together in a way that reduces part count, and increases strength and precision.

[Van Disaster]

2 hours ago, tater said:

That's why I think a "workshop" approach, for an orbital facility makes more sense for stock. Just the ability to put parts together in a way that reduces part count, and increases strength and precision.

Part count is what drove me to start using EL in the first place - building ships on Minmus made a vast difference ( that was before the orbital spawnpoint, or at least that was a different mod ).

If you've got a workshop sufficient to construct a knocked-down ship it's certainly enough to construct knocked-down parts, so I don't think you should necessarily be forced to ship everything to space as-is.

[pandaman]

11 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

Part count is what drove me to start using EL in the first place - building ships on Minmus made a vast difference ( that was before the orbital spawnpoint, or at least that was a different mod ).

If you've got a workshop sufficient to construct a knocked-down ship it's certainly enough to construct knocked-down parts, so I don't think you should necessarily be forced to ship everything to space as-is.

But a kit of parts must weight at least as much as the assembled item.

So you still have to lug all that mass into orbit, and I bet it's a lot easier to just bolt on an engine than have to assemble it in zero gravity first.

[Tyko]

I think the middle ground I'm looking for is to be able to access the VAB Interface to update an existing craft. Right now I can build it in the VAB with the tools to exactly place parts (symmetry, CoM, etc). Once I leave the VAB my current option is to use KIS, which isn't all that accurate and doesn't have the VAB tools.

So - you have to launch / build an orbital workshop like Pandaman said. Then you have to launch parts in KIS-type boxes - there's no way I'm imagining that I can fab a nuclear engine in space that IS too high tech. The benefit of the orbital workshop is that when you dock your ship you go into a full VAB style interface where you can fully modify your ship, change Action Groups, etc with the limitation being that the only parts that show in your orbital workshop are parts you've already launched up to it from KSC.

This would let you upgrade your ships without using KIS which is great for adding a light, but weren't really intended for swapping out heavy parts like engines or of upgrading parts that aren't surface attached.

The best part is that Squad wouldn't have to invent a whole new system. VAB already exists. Re-skin the VAB background to look like a space dock and then build a workshop part or parts that enable you to trigger access to this new VAB when you are docked to it. The parts could limit the size or part-count of what you can edit just like the VAB limits part count on what it can build. Need to work on bigger ships? you need a bigger workshop 

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, tjt said:

I think the middle ground I'm looking for is to be able to access the VAB Interface to update an existing craft. Right now I can build it in the VAB with the tools to exactly place parts (symmetry, CoM, etc). Once I leave the VAB my current option is to use KIS, which isn't all that accurate and doesn't have the VAB tools.

So - you have to launch / build an orbital workshop like Pandaman said. Then you have to launch parts in KIS-type boxes - there's no way I'm imagining that I can fab a nuclear engine in space that IS too high tech. The benefit of the orbital workshop is that when you dock your ship you go into a full VAB style interface where you can fully modify your ship, change Action Groups, etc with the limitation being that the only parts that show in your orbital workshop are parts you've already launched up to it from KSC.

This would let you upgrade your ships without using KIS which is great for adding a light, but weren't really intended for swapping out heavy parts like engines or of upgrading parts that aren't surface attached.

The best part is that Squad wouldn't have to invent a whole new system. VAB already exists. Re-skin the VAB background to look like a space dock and then build a workshop part or parts that enable you to trigger access to this new VAB when you are docked to it. The parts could limit the size or part-count of what you can edit just like the VAB limits part count on what it can build. Need to work on bigger ships? you need a bigger workshop 

Yep.  That's what I had in mind. Thanks for describing it better than i did.

[SinBad]

Maybe an inflateable pressurised droydock? Like a big sack that you put the ship in, then zip it up and inflate?

[Van Disaster]

8 hours ago, tjt said:

I think the middle ground I'm looking for is to be able to access the VAB Interface to update an existing craft. Right now I can build it in the VAB with the tools to exactly place parts (symmetry, CoM, etc). Once I leave the VAB my current option is to use KIS, which isn't all that accurate and doesn't have the VAB tools.

So - you have to launch / build an orbital workshop like Pandaman said. Then you have to launch parts in KIS-type boxes - there's no way I'm imagining that I can fab a nuclear engine in space that IS too high tech. The benefit of the orbital workshop is that when you dock your ship you go into a full VAB style interface where you can fully modify your ship, change Action Groups, etc with the limitation being that the only parts that show in your orbital workshop are parts you've already launched up to it from KSC.

This would let you upgrade your ships without using KIS which is great for adding a light, but weren't really intended for swapping out heavy parts like engines or of upgrading parts that aren't surface attached.

The best part is that Squad wouldn't have to invent a whole new system. VAB already exists. Re-skin the VAB background to look like a space dock and then build a workshop part or parts that enable you to trigger access to this new VAB when you are docked to it. The parts could limit the size or part-count of what you can edit just like the VAB limits part count on what it can build. Need to work on bigger ships? you need a bigger workshop 

OK - so if we want to prototype this, we have currently:

EL:

* can spawn vessels assembled in the VAB from a piece attached to an orbiting vessel. Putting partcount limits into that would be fairly trivial. Does have it's own spawn system though because it has requirements beyond the VAB; it takes time to build a ship & that depends on engineers in workshops attached to the vessel.
* Can deconstruct a vessel in space part by part ( turns it into goo, currently )
 

Hangar, which I don't think is currently updated:

* Stores & respawns an entire vessel from storage, including resources.

- What is missing:

* Inventory system jammed into the VAB. This I'm really not sure about; the mechanism to have parts appear based on conditionals is in there somewhere because the tech tree uses it. Sticking a part count on the part icon, I have no idea if that's possible, any more than removing a part from the visible catalog without you exiting the VAB. Might be trivial, might be a killer, I don't know.
* Inventory system in general is not really a problem, can be jammed into EL's recycling system - in fact it's just an alternative/extra back end to EL's workshop/common resource system ( you could use EL to build small parts still & put them in the inventory if you wanted ). I would imagine you dock your containers of parts with a brand new part derived from EL's recycler ( let's call it a loading dock ) and it just notes what's in the container & adds to the station's inventory. We'd need something new for containers of stuff ( use KIS as an influence ) which involves building a gui to put things in the container.
* Loading a random craft file ( generated from whatever you drove into your spacedock ) into the VAB, and then getting it back out into space again. Right. Once upon a time you couldn't have spawning points in space, and I'm really not sure you can spawn out of the VAB into space ( or outside the PQS system ) currently either, that would need checking.

Anyone reading who can elaborate on the missing areas?

[Tyko]

Yep, I think that's it! sounds like a workable system

Edited July 27, 2016 by tjt

[Van Disaster]

In fact the inventory transfer system is just a complicated version of Resources, so perhaps it can be that under the hood too ( not sure if we could just extend the existing resource code to hold subresources, but worth a look ). Patching that into the VAB, updating the catalogue while you're constructing & then spawning into space are the problem areas.

There would be a whole lot of admin work deciding what parts can be dismantled to fit in containers, but that is just giving them a "packed up" volume - otherwise if the part clips out of the container then obviously you either need a bigger one or to send it up outside a container. *That* is when you'd need the modified EL recycler, so you could put a part from space into storage; someone will have to work out the mechanics of how you eat a part and not the entire vessel

Edit: of course you can update the VAB catalogue, part filters do it. That leaves spawning into & out of the VAB, and actually filtering the part list. Also, limiting symmetry based on the number of parts.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Van Disaster

[pandaman]

I don't see any need, or strong reason IMO, to send up any parts or assemblies in a 'collapsed' or 'kit' form. 

Do what they do for orbital assembly IRL.  Send up ready made sub assemblies and stick them together to make a finished craft or station.

Currently we can only do that by having docking ports on both the 'target' and new assembly.  Whereas with the 'workshop' concept the vessel under construction would be docked normally to the designated 'build' port.  Other sub assemblies would be docked to another 'inventory port' on the 'workshop' and become part of the 'inventory' (the 'inventory port' could be a variant on the claw so the new sub assembly won't need a docking port to connect it).  On entering 'Build Mode' the VAB tools become active and the sub assemblies can be selected and placed as in the current VAB. Once selected and placed the sub assembly is removed from the inventory and its model removed from where it was docked to the 'inventory port'.  When construction is complete, undock from the 'build port' and you're good to go.

[Van Disaster]

If you're going to do that you could just have a docking port that removes itself on docking & connects the nodes both docking ports were attached to - no need for VAB at all. If the "port" is almost flush with the segments you're attaching then you can preview it all connected quite happily.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Van Disaster

[pandaman]

2 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

If you're going to do that you could just have a docking port that removes itself on docking & connects the nodes both docking ports were attached to - no need for VAB at all. If the "port" is almost flush with the segments you're attaching then you can preview it all connected quite happily.

You could yes, and that's a nice simple and elegant solution, but the VAB functions also allow precise rotation and orientation which is 'a wee bit fiddly' with just docking ports.

[SinBad]

What about a close integration of kis/kas and infernal robotics? All we really need is a kas capable robotic manipulator. Have it remove the limitation of engineers per ton as well. Then we could all build gantry mounted 7 axis manipulator arms.
 and build our rockets out of kis containers.

On the subject of packability, i remember something from the 90's about nasa testing aluminium extruders in orbit. Most of the large pieces folks are worried about are the most packable. Jumbo tank is just a bunch of extrudec struts welded togeter with sheeting welded over the top. You can squeeze quit a few square meters of 2mm thick sheet metal into a cubic meter. Then you just extrude your pipe work, get some cables off the reel and a few sensors an selonoid valves out the bottom drawer and get to work fitting it. Im not saying that we as the player should have to do all of this manually, just that when you put a jumbo into one of the huge inline kis crates, what you are putting in is the materials required to fabricate it (it weighs the same, and takes up about the right volume for disasembled struts and sheet metal). That fabrication happens automatically when you take it out again, otherwise it would be a pita to do anything.

EPL works the same way, just allows you to keep a stock of generic materials. So instead of having a stack of sheet metal that can only be used to make a jumbo tank, you have a lump of metal that could be extruded into struts, or sheets, or pipes, or cables. To avoid pita, its just callled rocket parts.