KSP Interstellar - Alcubierre Drive

[TwinKerbal]

So I just recently downloaded KSP Interstellar and I wanted to use the warp drive. Problem is I don't quite know how to use it. From what I can tell, it requires an insane amount of electricity, although for some reason you need antimatter and exotic matter? Also I can't even get the ship enough power. My electricity to mass ratio is always not good enough. It always says the ship has too much mass in order to run with this amount of electricity. How do you guys power your Alcubierre drives?

[Core]

I gave up on it when all my exotic matter would just vanish after I ran out of charge, and how the MgWattage need would continously rise. Gave up on it for that reason. I did manage to test it via Hyperedit, but that was it.

Other people here have it figured out, I am sure. just not me.

[RoverDude]

Sem-related:  If you are just looking for a stand-alone Alcubierre drive:

 

[FreeThinker]

From the OP

Quote

Warpdrive Faster Than warp drives

Fast than light speed is only possible by folding space itself.  Space in front of the vessel needs to be shrunken while space behind it the vessel is extracted. To shrink and expand space, you need to generate negative mass which can be achieved by exciting exotic matter. KSPI warp drive can generate exotic matter  and use it to create a warp field. The amount of power required to create a stable warp fields depends on the speed and power of the warp coils.

The speed of light itself requires the least amount energy. Traveling faster or slower requires more power. However speed is influenced by a large degree by the curvature of space, in other words, gravity. It means that the higher the gravity pull of any heavily body, the lower the maximum speed possible for a finite amount of power requirement. This effectively means that when a vessel is in a low Kerbin orbit, where the pull of gravity is significant, the maximum warp speed is very low. And since traveling slower than the speed of light requires more power, it means that it will be hard or impossible to generate enough power. To  get around it, you need to bring your vessel further away from the gravity source or install more warp drive power.

Warp Power is achieved by any of the 3 warpdrives in KSP, The Light Warp Engine, the Foldable Warp Engine and the Heavy Warp Engine. The amount of warp power is directly dependent on the mass of the warp drive. Warp drives also stack linear, which means it will not matter if you use 24 ton of light warp drives or a single large warp drive.

 

[FreeThinker]

On 30-7-2016 at 4:41 AM, TwinKerbal said:

So I just recently downloaded KSP Interstellar and I wanted to use the warp drive. Problem is I don't quite know how to use it. From what I can tell, it requires an insane amount of electricity, although for some reason you need antimatter and exotic matter? Also I can't even get the ship enough power. My electricity to mass ratio is always not good enough. It always says the ship has too much mass in order to run with this amount of electricity. How do you guys power your Alcubierre drives?

What is important to understand that the KSP Interstellar Extended- Alcubierre Drive power requirement depends on avialbe warp drive power (warpdrive mass) nearby gravity wells and set speed relative to lightspeed (lower and higher speed are more difficult). The minumum amount of power requirment can be achieved by beeing in a high orbit, with a large warp drive power to mass ratio. This also means that trying to get to warp with a large vessel but little warp drive power in a low orbit is going to require a very large amount of power.

Edited August 2, 2016 by FreeThinker

[TwinKerbal]

10 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

What is important to understand that the KSP Interstellar Extended- Alcubierre Drive power requirement depends on avialbe warp drive power (warpdrive mass) nearby gravity wells and set speed relative to lightspeed (lower and higher speed are more difficult). The minumum amount of power requirment can be achieved by beeing in a high orbit, with a large warp drive power to mass ratio. This also means that trying to get to warp with a large vessel but little warp drive power in a low orbit is going to require a very large amount of power.

Ok so ideally I would be in higher kerbin orbit with a large warp drive. But what about exotic matter, etc

[FreeThinker]

6 minutes ago, TwinKerbal said:

Ok so ideally I would be in higher kerbin orbit with a large warp drive. But what about exotic matter, etc

The exotic matter merely function as a charge meter for opening the warp field (technically the Exotic Matter is used to create the Warp field). Once the you enter warp or cut charging power, the Exotic matter dissipates in an instance.