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

[jd284]

Furthermore, regarding WOLF, do I really need LifeSupport (and Habitation) on Earth / in the KSC biome? That's a bit ridiculous... or is that a bug related to RSS and Earth not being Kerbin?

[HeavyDestroyer]

On 7/25/2022 at 7:12 PM, jd284 said:

Furthermore, regarding WOLF, do I really need LifeSupport (and Habitation) on Earth / in the KSC biome? That's a bit ridiculous... or is that a bug related to RSS and Earth not being Kerbin?

I play with the vanilla Kerbin and I still need life support and habitation  on it.

What you can do if you don't want to bother with that in certain biomes is edit the save files so that you get infinite life support and habitation where you want.

Edited July 27, 2022 by HeavyDestroyer

[modus]

Also, why would it be ridiculous or a bug? Where would your Kerbals sleep? What would they eat?

[AtomicRocketBooster]

In the KSC at least, there's already the giant Astronaut Complex right there - Infrastructure seems pretty built out already.  For other biomes, I would probably expect it to be much cheaper, but still required in some capacity.

What I did is just went into the save and added a bunch of habitation and life support points to the KSC biome. Haven't decided what to do to other Kerbin biomes - probably add a smaller number based on some hand-wavy estimates.

[jd284]

4 hours ago, modus said:

Also, why would it be ridiculous or a bug? Where would your Kerbals sleep? What would they eat?

At home, and whatever they choose to buy at the grocery store, I would imagine. Like any employee.

It's not like a prison or remote planet where you'd expect the employer to provide an all-expenses-paid stay. Especially since for USI-LS, Kerbals get infinite life support and habitation below 30 km, so why do I need to provide oxygen and complicated life support equipment? We already have one down here, it's called a window!

Also from a gameplay perspective, with the need for life support and habitation, Wolf complexity hits you right in the face with everything it's got just to open a transport route to LEO/LKO, rather than only requiring these complexities later on when you're well established in orbit and want to expand beyond.

There's little point in offering the depot early in the tech tree when you need all the other modules anyway just for transport credits.

4 hours ago, HeavyDestroyer said:

What you can do if you don't want to bother with that in certain biomes is edit the save files so that you get infinite life support and habitation where you want.

48 minutes ago, AtomicRocketBooster said:

What I did is just went into the save and added a bunch of habitation and life support points to the KSC biome. Haven't decided what to do to other Kerbin biomes - probably add a smaller number based on some hand-wavy estimates.

Yeah, I think I'll do that, maybe not infinite but I'll add enough, just what's required for the transport credits to LEO. That seems reasonable and a decent way to learn how to Wolf.

I don't really think the other biomes need much anyway since transport routes are free, so I'd just have some harvesters there and ship the output to KSC for processing.

[RoverDude]

3 minutes ago, jd284 said:

There's little point in offering the depot early in the tech tree when you need all the other modules anyway just for transport credits.

Except you don't.   You can easily set up a whole resource network on the mun (or anywhere really) with zero need for life support, with multiple feeder routes from different biomes to a centralized base.   

[jd284]

4 hours ago, RoverDude said:

Except you don't.   You can easily set up a whole resource network on the mun (or anywhere really) with zero need for life support, with multiple feeder routes from different biomes to a centralized base.   

Oh yeah, that's a fair point. Using it as a feeder for standard MKS setups at first, and then moving to Wolf parts for scaling up.

I guess I got thrown off by the tutorials that all seem to start at the deep end first. This makes way more sense.

[RoverDude]

25 minutes ago, jd284 said:

Oh yeah, that's a fair point. Using it as a feeder for standard MKS setups at first, and then moving to Wolf parts for scaling up.

I guess I got thrown off by the tutorials that all seem to start at the deep end first. This makes way more sense.

I actually do all of that with 100% WOLF.    And I've been saying for years people need to not try making all-in-one bases as their first go to.

 

 

[modus]

20 minutes ago, RoverDude said:

I actually do all of that with 100% WOLF.    And I've been saying for years people need to not try making all-in-one bases as their first go to.

 

 

I have heard you oh dude of the rovers, and can totally confirm that many small WOLFs can run a pretty big network.

Keyword is network and indeed not one big base that does everything. For me that was a real mindswitch.

[JamesonKerbal]

And here I am struggling to finish this walkthrough because I'm doing the "go big everywhere" plan (producing Mk/Sp/A/E/R/S at Minmus and Mun to power further expansion elsewhere).

I could probably finish this to have it available as a cautionary tale, then add on a new beginning chapter showing the "just depots and 5 power worth of extraction" method. Or is that just subscribing to the sunk cost fallacy?

[modus]

8 hours ago, JamesonKerbal said:

And here I am struggling to finish this walkthrough because I'm doing the "go big everywhere" plan (producing Mk/Sp/A/E/R/S at Minmus and Mun to power further expansion elsewhere).

I could probably finish this to have it available as a cautionary tale, then add on a new beginning chapter showing the "just depots and 5 power worth of extraction" method. Or is that just subscribing to the sunk cost fallacy?

I hope you finish it. I found the first part really helpful, even if it's not entirely the way I play right now. When I first started with WOLF it helped me get to know the mechanics. And besides, the "go big" approach isn't "wrong" or anything.

[JamesonKerbal]

What's killing me with this walkthrough is having to get Kerbals from KSC to the place I need them.

My current solution is:

1. Launch the kerbals I need in a transfer vessel -- basically just a can full of seats with docking ports, such as a few hitchiker storages, or a lander can mk2 with a hitchhiker storage attached
2. Undock from the launch vehicle, dock with the transfer vehicle - launch vehicle is SSTO, transfer vehicle has Wolfhound engines for efficient transfers and MKS Kerbitat, Nom-O-Matics to keep Kerbals happy during the voyage (essentially the kind of craft you'd use for an Aldrin Cycler)
3. At the destination (eg: the depot lander I just built to expand infrastructure on Minmus) undock the crew pod from the transfer vehicle and dock it to the lander

Later I introduce passenger routes, at which point the crew transfers are a bit easier: drive a bus to the KSC terminal, transfer from there via Kerbin Station to Mun Station, create the lander and transfer crew at that station. This eliminates the futzing around with launch vehicle and transfer vehicle.

Along the way I make simple mistakes like forgetting that I've already got the crew for a particular expansion in flight, and they arrive at Minmus only to find that the lander they were sent for was already connected to the depot a week ago. So I have to load a save game and repeat the bits I needed to do while skipping the bits I messed up! It gets worse though: I added dome lights to the crew pods so I could colour code them, because more than once I've had multiple crew pods in flight and even though the ship is named according to what lander the crew belong to, I would forget which vessel I'm looking at. So I'd set the dome lights on that crew pod to different colours and write down the colour on my checklist (eg: "Minmus 13 - Flats Chemicals and Silicon (orange)"). It turns out that keeping track of multiple crews in transit is not something I'm good at. Don't ask me to help organise your holiday travel.

Anyway that's my whinge for today. I'm almost finished walking through the Minmus expansion and the Mun expansion is simpler so here's hoping I can finish it this weekend.

edit: and now that I wrote that down it occurs to me I could also colour-code the lander so there's an extra visual confirmation that I'm mating the crew pod to the correct lander. I'll make that change once I've finished this iteration.

edit: And I'll probably put the WOLF modules inside a Mk3 cargo bay so I have a pale-coloured thing that I can light with spotlights. The dark grey of the WOLF modules doesn't lend itself to pretty lighting. Or I could put them inside an interstage fairing! Thanks for helping me out here folks

Edited July 30, 2022 by JamesonKerbal

[JamesonKerbal]

Here's a quick visual proof of concept of my matching colours idea. In the next release of the walkthrough I'll go and colour-code the landers (so eg: Minmus 02 Greater Flats Specialized Parts will become 02 Greater Flats Specialized Parts (violet) so regardless of whether I'm in map view or looking at a bunch of crew pods docked to a shipyard, I'll be able to match crew pods to landers based on colour.

Now I need to go read up on colour-blindness and no doubt I'll find that orange, violet and teal are exactly the wrong colours to use for accessibility . Rather than stealing the WOLF flag I should make some of my own, probably circle/diamond/triangle just to be visually distinctive. If only I could include flags into my save game instead of having to get the player to specially modify their KSP GameData.

But I'm already distracting myself from getting the walkthrough published in the first place before I start improving it.

One of the reasons it's taken this long is that I've tried building WOLF infrastructure on EVE to get access to karborundum. That was a lot of time experimenting with EDL, vehicle design, toying around with ascent vehicles powered by electric ducted fans, etc. And then there was my failed experiments at getting my 2000m/s delta-v shipyard from Kerbin to Moho using a Kerbin-Eve-Eve-Moho gravity assist.

 

[Feellikeapple]

Hi, I'm new in the USI mod pack world, I'm planning on installing mks cus konstruction cant function without mks, so quick question:

Is near future + stockalike station parts compatible with mks? cus i like the gameplay improvements mks adds to ksp, but at the same time I honestly like near future parts more, so will all the near future habitation parts & containers work with mks?

[modus]

Hey @Feellikeapple

Like I said in the Konstruction thread: it's not that Konstruction can't function without MKS, I'm just nog sure how exactly. @RoverDude?

And I'm sure someone else will confirm that MKS and NF+SSPXr play nice together. SSPXr has patches for USI (LS and MKS), so they will behave like MKS parts.
 

[JamesonKerbal]

1 hour ago, Feellikeapple said:

Is near future + stockalike station parts compatible with mks?

It seems like it. I tried out a quick and dirty space station and the habitation option seemed to work just fine, though it didn't allow selection of hab-quarters versus hab-common like the USI parts do. The non-lithium containers allow selection based on Community Resource Pack. The fission reactors just work out of the box using the CRP Enriched Uranium, Depleted Uranium and Xenon Gas resources. I did not test whether a Future Electrical reactor built from a Konstructor needed an Engineer on EVA to start it up though.

I couldn't find any way to extract or process Lithium/Spodumene. So if you use the Near Future lithium-based engines you won't be able to resupply other than shipping the lithium from Kerbin.

[modus]

6 minutes ago, JamesonKerbal said:

I did not test whether a Future Electrical reactor built from a Konstructor needed an Engineer on EVA to start it up though.

AFAIK it doesn't.

6 minutes ago, JamesonKerbal said:

I couldn't find any way to extract or process Lithium/Spodumene. So if you use the Near Future lithium-based engines you won't be able to resupply other than shipping the lithium from Kerbin.

Yeah that's right. My orbital gasstation makes everything via WOLF, except Lithium (and Methane? Not really sure, don't have the game open right now).
But for me, that's not really a problem, I have a cargoship bringing Lithium from Minmus. 

With some patch magic, you can adjust the extractors so they can handle lithium ofcourse, I guess.

Edited August 2, 2022 by modus
extra

[Terwin]

When I was using near future engines, I remember the large ISRU processor being able to produce lithium from ore.

This might not be balanced however as the large ISRU does a straight loss-less conversion based on mass, and ore containers are much more mass efficient than lithium tanks.

(But if you are already using firespitter to swap tank contents, this is probably less of an issue.)

[modus]

10 minutes ago, Terwin said:

When I was using near future engines, I remember the large ISRU processor being able to produce lithium from ore.

That's correct. It's just that lithium isn't in WOLF so you have to mine and process it.

Man I've been playing with all these mods (USI, NF, SSPXr, Planetside exploration,...) together for so long I can't remember what changes what and what is stock and what not 

Edited August 2, 2022 by modus

[Jason Kerman]

Hi! Is there an archived version of MKS-Lite? I'd like to have a try to make it up-to-date if you don't mind.

[mhoram]

I am on KSP 1.13.3 with MKS v112.0.1 (and nothing else) and there seems to be a problem with costs of containers in Career mode.

In the VAB the individual costs of containers is not calculated:

The cost for Commodities container should be 8.1Mil according to https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/USI_Core/blob/9a2e3bb55dc5988b929104c5f7b559e1e92264a7/FOR_RELEASE/GameData/UmbraSpaceIndustries/Kontainers/Parts/Kontainer_03.cfg#L79

However the calculated price is only 26k.

After launching the vessel and immediately recovering it, it gets very expensive:

The configuration of the parts were:

- Kontainer (3.75m): Commodities

- Karibou Cargo Crate: Karbonite

- Kontainer Tank (1.25m): Karborundum

 

I had a look at https://github.com/snjo/Firespitter/blob/a8922491bf410dccbf5d28ef6a8c14bad5752648/Firespitter/customization/FSfuelSwitch.cs#L229-L241 but could not find anything unusual.

 

Any recommendations of how to deal with this issue?

[modus]

17 minutes ago, mhoram said:

I am on KSP 1.13.3 with MKS v112.0.1 (and nothing else) and there seems to be a problem with costs of containers in Career mode.

In the VAB the individual costs of containers is not calculated:

The cost for Commodities container should be 8.1Mil according to https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/USI_Core/blob/9a2e3bb55dc5988b929104c5f7b559e1e92264a7/FOR_RELEASE/GameData/UmbraSpaceIndustries/Kontainers/Parts/Kontainer_03.cfg#L79

However the calculated price is only 26k.

After launching the vessel and immediately recovering it, it gets very expensive:

The configuration of the parts were:

- Kontainer (3.75m): Commodities

- Karibou Cargo Crate: Karbonite

- Kontainer Tank (1.25m): Karborundum

 

I had a look at https://github.com/snjo/Firespitter/blob/a8922491bf410dccbf5d28ef6a8c14bad5752648/Firespitter/customization/FSfuelSwitch.cs#L229-L241 but could not find anything unusual.

 

Any recommendations of how to deal with this issue?

There's a fix for this here 

(Also, I think the reason for the container being cheap in the VAB is because it's empty in your screenshot)

[mhoram]

@modus perfect, thank you!

[Terwin]

14 hours ago, Jason Kerman said:

Hi! Is there an archived version of MKS-Lite? I'd like to have a try to make it up-to-date if you don't mind.

In the current version of MKS you can specify how much machinery is consumed, including setting machinery consumption to zero.

To the best of my understanding zero machinery consumption is the primary difference between MKS and MKS lite, so this setting makes MKS lite redundant.

[heli]

hey, a question, i always get the error message with Konstruktion "engineer not present in active vessel"
maybe it has something to do with the language? in German it means Techniker