totm may 2024 [1.12.x] - Modular Kolonization System (MKS)

[voicey99]

1 minute ago, Shawarmakriger said:

...Oh.

Right. Then it's just me not paying attention, thanks for the help

I could be wrong (I don't use karbonite, but this what I think based on what I can tell from the cfgs and a bit of logic)-drive it around a bit and see if it works elsewhere in the biome. Apparently the Karborundum concentration on Eve varies from 0.01%-0.001% from biome to biome (but every biome is guaranteed to have some) and has a "variance" of "50"-whatever that means. That variance might have reduced the concentration to where it was simply too low for even those drills in that particular spot.

[WuphonsReach]

yeah, the new MPUs are pretty nice (other then the bug with 2.5m MPU making chemicals when set to Fertilizer(G)) for automated drilling landers.  They're not fast, but that's okay, if it's automated then it's not time-sensitive (other then RTG/nuke wearing out or machinery).

I haven't decided yet what I'll do when mine wear out of machinery.  They've only been on the surface for 300-500 days.

[ErevanGaming]

11 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Hey @ErevanGaming - better to toss this to @allista

Am tossing, am tossing  thanks again!

[Fury1SOG]

8 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

I believe that's a bug with the Fuel Cell. Have you tried other modules for receiving electricity, such as the Duna modules or the Dedicated Microwave Power Tranceiver part?

My fuel cells also don't see any PDU's, although all other parts that are nearby are perfectly happy with the one I have running.

Thanks for the info.

I confirm that the Fuel Cell Array CFG is missing a "ModuleLogisticsConsumer" entry needed to enable power distribution. Once added with a MM patch, it started working

I will see if I can figure out how to do a Pull Request.

[voicey99]

@Fury1SOG Like this:

On 27/01/2017 at 11:07 PM, voicey99 said:

Assuming you mean a Github PR, you click the button labelled "fork"-this will clone the repo to your account. Then, open the file you want to change in your fork and click edit-when you've finished, click "commit changes". Now, go into the main MKS repo and click "New Pull Request". Now click "compare across forks" and select your fork from the dropdown, and it will bring up a list of the changes (commits) you've made. Select the relevant commit(s) and finish making the req.

You can just add ModuleLogisticsConsumer straight to whatever file modifies the fuelcell, no separate patch files needed.

[Kobymaru]

I think there is a minor nuisance going on with scavenging and organics production.

The situation:

One vessel produces Organics with the MKS 'Duna' Agricultural Module (Agriculture (S) module), and another vessel consumes said organics. The transport works via scavenging.

The problem:

The organics are actually taken out of the Agricultural module part (Not sure how, I didn't know it even participated in local logistics/scavenging). This wouldn't be a problem, but the amount of Organics in the Module determine the speed at which the Organics are produced. The fewer organics in there, the fewer organics per time.

This means that I can'T get the Agricultural module to operate at full speed (for some reason, 80 units out of 100 stay in the module).

 

Not sure if that's a bug or by design, but either way this should be revisited.

[impyre]

On 2/28/2017 at 8:41 AM, cthulhum said:

The industrial strip miner seems to be bugged for me (at least on Minmus, I haven't tested it elsewhere).  By default it was giving me a "no ground contact" error regardless of positioning, and despite clearly burrowing well into the ground.

Fortunately, I was actually able to fix it pretty easily by changing the ImpactRange values in the part description from 5 to 50 (at, least, I'm reasonably certain that's what fixed it).

Just thought I'd throw that out there in case it was helpful.

I've been having this problem with the large drill as well. Not the smaller ones, just the large USI drills. No placement works at all, it's funny because they worked fine at first.

Also, and this is more of a note really, the planetary logistics were making me miserable. Took me an hour to figure out why my water converters were sucking all my power continuously, but every time my water started to get near full it jumped back down. Turns out I dumped something like 1.5million units of water, 3 million units of raw uranium, among other stuff into the void. While my base can sustain max power draw for a while, it wasn't designed to do it continually. I had to manually turn off planetary warehousing on every container.

Thanks to everyone that helps with this mod. I appreciate it.

PS: if anyone else is using this with Extraplanetary Launchpads and finds themselves using survey stakes more than they'd like, I'd recommend getting some of the welded asphalt tiles from kerbalhacks. They include a couple of really nice pads, and turning them into actual launchpads use-able for off-world construction is quite easy. Add the launchpad module and then a spawn offset height of .4 or .5

[Gilph]

53 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

I think there is a minor nuisance going on with scavenging and organics production.

The situation:

One vessel produces Organics with the MKS 'Duna' Agricultural Module (Agriculture (S) module), and another vessel consumes said organics. The transport works via scavenging.

The problem:

The organics are actually taken out of the Agricultural module part (Not sure how, I didn't know it even participated in local logistics/scavenging). This wouldn't be a problem, but the amount of Organics in the Module determine the speed at which the Organics are produced. The fewer organics in there, the fewer organics per time.

This means that I can'T get the Agricultural module to operate at full speed (for some reason, 80 units out of 100 stay in the module).

 

Not sure if that's a bug or by design, but either way this should be revisited.

I can confirm this.

In addition, some rather strange behavior with respect to tanks and scavenging that's similar to this.

I have a base that contains a NFP, a recycler (both have recyclable storage disabled, and a Redi-Pak with only Local Warehouse enabled.   The design is that the local recyclable storage is off on all parts except the redi-pak, and the Redi-Pak will contain all local recyclables and scavenge from all the other bases to feed the Recycler. When I make it active, there are recyclables in the NFP storage, even though the storage is disabled, and the redi-pak is empty. This is the exact opposite of what should happen.

Over time, I see the recyclables get lower and scavenging starts to pull from the other bases. But, instead of that content going to the redi-pak (enabled), it goes to the NFP (disabled).  In short, the NFP storage is acting like a warehouse enabled tank that ignores the disabled setting, and the redi-pak looks like a non warehouse container.  It appears that the scavenging is transferring to the wrong tanks and ignoring the disabled setting.

I know it's hard to explain. I'll try to get some screenshots and put in Github. Thanks

[ExavierMacbeth]

@Kobymaru & @Gilph, this was something that came up a few pages back. There is a workaround that is arguably a bug. You can "lock" the machinery & organics in the module by using the right click menu and the little icon on the end of the resource bar. The converters & other functions will no longer pull the resource from that location and instead deplete other storage. Useful for preventing organics from drying up or to hard lock an efficiency level on a machinery based production module.

Arguably a bug, but personally I like it functioning like that as its less things i have to keep track of once its set

[Gilph]

3 minutes ago, ExavierMacbeth said:

@Kobymaru & @Gilph, this was something that came up a few pages back. There is a workaround that is arguably a bug. You can "lock" the machinery & organics in the module by using the right click menu and the little icon on the end of the resource bar. The converters & other functions will no longer pull the resource from that location and instead deplete other storage. Useful for preventing organics from drying up or to hard lock an efficiency level on a machinery based production module.

Arguably a bug, but personally I like it functioning like that as its less things i have to keep track of once its set

Hi...I have done that, but this is a little different (I think). It's easy to see, but hard to describe. I'm looking to see how to make a youtube video easily and try to describe it visually.

After some more tests today, it does look like a scavenging issue.  All other functions seem to behave correctly and respect the locks when enabled. Without knowing the internals, it looks like when scavenging is enumerating the storage tank IDs, it switched the redi-pak and NFP IDs. Whenever scavenging executes and pulls recyclables from a remote tank and tries to store it locally, it puts it in the NFP tank, not the redi-pak. It's not respecting the lock on the NFP tank because it's treating it like the redi-pak tank, which has no lock.  But, everything else other than scavenging is not affected.  When the Recycler uses up everything and tries to pull from the NFP tank, it cannot because the lock is enabled.

[Kobymaru]

24 minutes ago, ExavierMacbeth said:

 You can "lock" the machinery & organics in the module by using the right click menu and the little icon on the end of the resource bar.

That doesn't work though. Even when locked, turning on Local Warehousing on *another* vessel, the Organics get pulled out.

Machinery is a different topic, because it doesn't participate in Local/Planetary Logistics or Scavenging.

 

 

[Kobymaru]

15 minutes ago, Gilph said:

Hi...I have done that, but this is a little different (I think). It's easy to see, but hard to describe. I'm looking to see how to make a youtube video easily and try to describe it visually.

Here's a video:

 

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have a vessel with a Duna Agriculture Module with organics (and maybe one Organics Kontainer)
2. Have another vessel with an Organics Kontainer
3. Disable the Local Warehouse on both Vessels
4. Lock the Organics on the Agroponics Part
5. Switch to the Second Vessel with the Organics Kontainer, enable Local Logistics
6. Wait a few seconds, observe how some Organics appear in said container
7. Switch back to the original vessel. Observe that 20 Units of Organics were stolen from the Agroponics Module.

Stolen, I tell you! Stolen! These thieving Kerbals with their KolonySupplies-converters.

 

@Gilph if you want to make a GitHub Issue, you are free to copy-paste any part of this post including the video.

[Gilph]

2 minutes ago, Kobymaru said:

Here's a video:

 

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have a vessel with a Duna Agriculture Module with organics (and maybe one Organics Kontainer)
2. Have another vessel with an Organics Kontainer
3. Disable the Local Warehouse on both Vessels
4. Lock the Organics on the Agroponics Part
5. Switch to the Second Vessel with the Organics Kontainer, enable Local Logistics
6. Wait a few seconds, observe how some Organics appear in said container
7. Switch back to the original vessel. Observe that 20 Units of Organics were stolen from the Agroponics Module.

Stolen, I tell you! Stolen! These thieving Kerbals with their KolonySupplies-converters.

 

@Gilph if you want to make a GitHub Issue, you are free to copy-paste any part of this post including the video.

 

This is perfect. Thanks very much.  It could also be the Kerbal Mafia hijacking the shipment en route...

 

I think that you need both the Kontainer and the part storage for the issue to happen.  If you see this happening on a base that has only part storage and no Kontainers, please let me know.  Thanks

[voicey99]

2 hours ago, Gilph said:

 

This is perfect. Thanks very much.  It could also be the Kerbal Mafia hijacking the shipment en route...

 

I think that you need both the Kontainer and the part storage for the issue to happen.  If you see this happening on a base that has only part storage and no Kontainers, please let me know.  Thanks

 

Does adjusting the flow priority (higher priorities will be drained before lower priorities) change the storage patterns?

[Enorats]

Yeah, the USI drills have the same impact range as the stock ones. That's not a problem for the small or regular sized ones, but the big one needs to be more like 15 or 20. I've had to change that myself in the past when using those drills, as they don't "hit" the ground with any placement that won't tip your ship over when the drill extends.

[Enorats]

So, another question. What does botony, geology, and kolonization actually do? I see that the various kerbal types give bonuses to these research types, but have no idea what benefits that brings.

 

Also, is there any reason to use the new types instead of the stock ones? They each seem to be 1/4 what the stock types are in terms of skills and utility.

[sh1pman]

3 minutes ago, Enorats said:

So, another question. What does botony, geology, and kolonization actually do? I see that the various kerbal types give bonuses to these research types, but have no idea what benefits that brings.

They give bonuses to greenhouse and drills efficiency, or extend your habitation time.

5 minutes ago, Enorats said:

Also, is there any reason to use the new types instead of the stock ones? They each seem to be 1/4 what the stock types are in terms of skills and utility.

Yeah, but they also cost much less, only 10k per Kerbal.

[voicey99]

20 minutes ago, Enorats said:

So, another question. What does botony, geology, and kolonization actually do? I see that the various kerbal types give bonuses to these research types, but have no idea what benefits that brings.

 

Also, is there any reason to use the new types instead of the stock ones? They each seem to be 1/4 what the stock types are in terms of skills and utility.

The three ratings give bonuses to bases on the body-Geology rating gives a drill speed bonus (normal efficiency+[geology rating-100%]) as well as generating Funds as it increases. Biology rating I believe increases agricultural output (in the same formula as geology) as well as generating Science as it increases. Kolonisation grants bonuses to MKS converters (refinery, assembly plant, ASM etc. in the same formula as geology) and generates Rep as it increases. It also has the bonus effect of making all kerbals on that body (if USI-LS is installed) have infinite habitation time (if base hab time is 1yr or more) when ≥500%. Note that each rating is generated by different "groups" of specialisations (see the wiki). Note that FundsBoost=Geology rating, ScienceBoost = Botany and RepBoost = Kolonisation.

 

The new kolonists are simply meant as cheap residents for you to pack off to your bases to perform the same functions as the more expensive vanilla specialisations, but each specialisation only having one skill makes them unsuitable for main missions. For example, if you wanted to be able to pull from Planetary Logistics (requires LogisticsSkill), you would need either a Pilot or a Quartermaster (who have the skill)-and a QM is much cheaper than a Pilot, the presence of which is unnecessary if only one of their skills is needed. The advantage of being able to bulk-ship the cheap MKS professions is that the ratings increase faster based on how many kerbs you have of the relevant specialisations, meaning a 10K kerbal increases their rating just as fast as their 250K multi-spec counterpart.

Edited March 3, 2017 by voicey99

[Gilph]

4 hours ago, voicey99 said:

 

Does adjusting the flow priority (higher priorities will be drained before lower priorities) change the storage patterns?

No, doesnt seem to have any affect.

[Lord_Potato]

I noticed that if you set some max stupidity, minimum courage colonists, you actually gain money from hiring them. 

[voicey99]

Just now, Lord_Potato said:

I noticed that if you set some max stupidity, minimum courage colonists, you actually gain money from hiring them. 

I noticed that too, I've logged it as an issue on github already. You also gain money from launching empty 2.5/3.75m mobile processing units.

[WuphonsReach]

1 hour ago, voicey99 said:

I noticed that too, I've logged it as an issue on github already. You also gain money from launching empty 2.5/3.75m mobile processing units.

 

Possibly the curse of using Firespitter as the swapping tool.  When writing the configurations for the parts, it's not as straightforward as being able to specify the cost of the empty part.  You have to do a bit of fun math to figure out what the part should cost when empty and it's really easy to get wrong.  It took me a bit of trial and error when doing one for something else.

 

Source: Me (while writing up a Firespitter configuration for Phoenix Industries)

[Enorats]

So, some have mentioned that the new MPU's have planetary logistics push capability.

 

I'm considering sending automated miners consisting of an MPU and automated drill (or two?) to build up a supply of various materials in the Jool system before sending in my crewed modules. I'll likely send them out in the same transfer window as my scanning satellites, with base modules/crew following in the next. Unsure what else I need to make it all work though.. my goal is to have unmanned miners build up a supply in the PL stockpile. Do I need to include an inflatable warehouse, or some other form of storage? Guessing so, or mining won't happen. Thermal radiators would be needed.. as for power, would a PDU work? Not sure how long they'd last with the power draw though, or if they can function without an engineer. Solar likely wouldn't work well out that far, and fuel cells would only be an option if each miner is also mining ore and has an ISRU. 

 

Would a container of spare machinery be a good idea? Can an automated MPU lander take machinery from another container automatically, or does an engineer need to go service it?

 

My other option is of course simply shipping out full containers of materials instead, but it'd be nice to already have a PL stockpile built up with some mining capability in place before boots ever hit the ground.

Edited March 3, 2017 by Enorats

[DStaal]

PDU won't work without an Engineer.  I suggest nuclear, and a Kontainer for storage.

[Athur Dent]

Hey guys,

 

how exactly can i resupply my base with machinery? i dropped a kontainer nearby (< 100m), but all my storage remains empty