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

[voicey99]

Reply Stack Time!

6 hours ago, Virulent said:

How do you raise a planet's kolonization rating, and where can you see that?  Also, 50 years seems like an absolute ton. Is there a way to get that multiplier up real high, for say - a space station? It seems to me that habitation space needed is a factor of how many kerbals are on a craft, so to send say 40 kerbals to jool or some excrements, I'd need an absolute TON of hab, or a big bunch of modifiers? 

See this post (5th paragraph after the pic) for ratings. It's only 2.2yrs to Jool, less if you put your foot down like I do. If you're going to send a ton of kerbs, you have five options: Make a massive ship, send a load of smaller ships, let them grump out and restock them when they arrive, use DeepFreeze to pause their stats or use a kolonisation module to maintain their hab stat with colonysupplies. Hab multiplier (when kerbitats are set to hab-common mode) is also calculated individually for each part so you get penalised more and more as your on-craft population increases (and so is more and more over its 'max crew' stat-the multiplier is divided by the number on board divided by the max crew stat if it's over capacity), which makes it exponentially more difficult to transport increasing numbers of kerbals.

6 hours ago, Virulent said:

Well that's nifty. It feels a little bit cheaty - but I think it should work that way anyhow. I kind of wish Roverdude would make a fuel tundra, I'm still at a loss for how to make the karbonite and karborundum excrements as well, but I'm sure I'll figure it out as soon as a bother to look into it. 

You don't make Ka/Ka⁺, you mine it, extract it from the ocean, filter it out of the atmosphere or collect it from the exosphere (very low orbit-see the cfgs for where it should be). The idea of a fuel Tundra module has been mooted before, with general consensus (and RD's opinion) being that it's surplus to requirements. The biggest Mobile Processing Unit is in the same form factor as the large Tundra modules, though.

6 hours ago, Virulent said:

Thanks for the exact lines of code. I appreciate it. 

I typoed 'MiniSRU' it should read 'MiniISRU'.

1 hour ago, Virulent said:

What is GC? I thought EPL was the only game in town. 

GC is Ground Construction, the mod brought in to replace EPL for offworld construction. The BUNDLED version is pretty well integrated with MKS already, but further cooperation is in the works. You select a vessel to put into a DIYKit in the VAB, ship the kit over and assemble it from the kit with materialkits and some time.

1 hour ago, Virulent said:

Also, I realized that I *massively* undercalculated the power draw of the drills. In trying to find something that could do 3600ec/sec for two strip miners, I saw the largest reactor. It requires cooling in the realm of 1600KW. The largest cooling option I see in the VAB with MKS/USI/KIS/KAS installed, is the stock radiators, which cool something like 85k. They are absolutely massive though, and fitting them on to a mining rig isn't exactly practical. How the hell were we intended to cool these things?  

MKS has a special part for this, the Ranger Thermal Control System. In terms of general radiator stats, 'core heat transfer' is the max amount of heat it can pull from a single part, 'max cooling' is self-explanatory (for the TCS, ignore its suspiciously low stat), I don't know what 'transfer rate' is and 'cools up to #x part temp' means it can cool parts that are down to 1/# it's own temp. MKS drills are also notorious cooling-hogs (this is necessary to accommodate the sometimes absurd production bonuses and multipliers), so if you use them be sure to have a TCS on your craft.

1 hour ago, Virulent said:

Also, as a side note, I am at a loss for how to enrich uranium. I saw a forum post about a nuclear processor in MKS, but I can't find it - I'm starting to think that I'm missing a lot of stuff in the VAB, I.E. it just isn't showing up. Also I notice stuff isn't in the same place a lot. For example the Tundra Assembly Plant doesn't show up kolonization tab. is there some way to fix this? Typically I have to dig through the advanced menu to find stuff, and I like it less. 

MKS has its own MKS 'Tundra' Nuclear Fuel Plant for enriching uraninite and re-enriching spent fuel. Like the other processors, it can be found under the Manufacturing tab. A note on refuelling reactors: To refuel them, you will have to get an engineer out on EVA and go up to it and select 'perform maintenance' to pull uranium from containers on the same vessel or <150m away.

Edited June 27, 2017 by voicey99

[Terwin]

25 minutes ago, Virulent said:

What is GC? I thought EPL was the only game in town. 

 

Also, I realized that I *massively* undercalculated the power draw of the drills. In trying to find something that could do 3600ec/sec for two strip miners, I saw the largest reactor. It requires cooling in the realm of 1600KW. The largest cooling option I see in the VAB with MKS/USI/KIS/KAS installed, is the stock radiators, which cool something like 85k. They are absolutely massive though, and fitting them on to a mining rig isn't exactly practical. How the hell were we intended to cool these things? 

 

Also, as a side note, I am at a loss for how to enrich uranium. I saw a forum post about a nuclear processor in MKS, but I can't find it - I'm starting to think that I'm missing a lot of stuff in the VAB, I.E. it just isn't showing up. Also I notice stuff isn't in the same place a lot. For example the Tundra Assembly Plant doesn't show up kolonization tab. is there some way to fix this? Typically I have to dig through the advanced menu to find stuff, and I like it less. 

GC: Ground construction

It lets you bring DIYKits, containing all of the expensive/hard to make bits, from kerbin and then an engineer in a workshop can use Material kits to turn the DIYKit into whatever vessel you loaded into it in the VAB.

I generally use it to build large self-sustaining bases without having an enormous fairing and lots of engines/stabilizers on the base itself(or an excessively huge rocket as much of the mass is also set aside to be replaced by material kits on-site).

Using KIS, I can generally send up a base in stages and just attach all the new parts to the existing base after I build the kit.

 

I would recommend looking at adding engineers to your mining bases, as they can provide a pretty massive bonus if you are not using the automated drills.

(Also, Pilots are only needed if you want to pull in resources from the planetary stores, I have several completely automated mining bases where I can send a pilot every now and again if I want to re-fill the local machinery(I will refill both the automated processors which have a large storage buffer so that they can be left unsupervised for long periods and a storage module for machinery that can be filled form the Planetary stores when a pilot is present, giving me additional time between visits))

I generally use mid-sized drills.  I currently have self-sustaining bases on Mun, Minmus, Moho, and Duna, and I do not think any of them have strip-miners.

(I may have sent a DIY kit for an automated base expansion with one, but it has not been built yet, and I forget)

Enriched Uranium can be produced by the nuclear fuel processing Tundra module(3.5 only I think) it can take either depleted uranium or urinite as the input.

With one of these on board, I can add new nuclear reactors by just shipping out an empty reactor and fuel it up it on site.

 

I believe that the assembly plant is on the construction tab further down.

Warning on drills: they have a multiplier based on your Geology colonization score for the body in question, and that can cause them to draw a lot more power than is listed in the VAB when you have a high multiplier(and the heat/energy listed in the VAB is per-converter, so the medium one actually uses 3x energy and produces 3x heat when all 3 slots are used.

Also, to deal with the increased heat dissipation needs with higher multipliers, drills got a 10x boost in maximum cooling, which can keep other parts from using the expanding vessel-wide stock radiators.  I recommend using a lot of the Ranger thermal control systems for landed bases that use drills, they provide 4500(I think) cooling on the part they are attached to and any directly connected parts.  I have a number of 2-high nuclear stacks with a tundra cooler on top of the top one.

 

[voicey99]

8 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I believe that the assembly plant is on the construction tab further down.

Warning on drills: they have a multiplier based on your Geology colonization score for the body in question, and that can cause them to draw a lot more power than is listed in the VAB when you have a high multiplier(and the heat/energy listed in the VAB is per-converter, so the medium one actually uses 3x energy and produces 3x heat when all 3 slots are used.

Also, to deal with the increased heat dissipation needs with higher multipliers, drills got a 10x boost in maximum cooling, which can keep other parts from using the expanding vessel-wide stock radiators.  I recommend using a lot of the Ranger thermal control systems for landed bases that use drills, they provide 4500(I think) cooling on the part they are attached to and any directly connected parts.  I have a number of 2-high nuclear stacks with a tundra cooler on top of the top one.

It's under manufacturing. I also explained multipliers in the linked post for ratings, but the drills get the geology rating squared (so a 127% rating means you get a 1.27²=1.6129 mult). The drills also have varying mults for how much cooling they need and how much they have, and I amended the descs some time back to explicitly state that all stats are per drill bit. The TCS provides 3MW of cooling, which I believe is vesselwide.

Edited June 27, 2017 by voicey99

[Virulent]

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

GC: Ground construction

It lets you bring DIYKits, containing all of the expensive/hard to make bits, from kerbin and then an engineer in a workshop can use Material kits to turn the DIYKit into whatever vessel you loaded into it in the VAB.

I generally use it to build large self-sustaining bases without having an enormous fairing and lots of engines/stabilizers on the base itself(or an excessively huge rocket as much of the mass is also set aside to be replaced by material kits on-site).

Using KIS, I can generally send up a base in stages and just attach all the new parts to the existing base after I build the kit.

 

I would recommend looking at adding engineers to your mining bases, as they can provide a pretty massive bonus if you are not using the automated drills.

(Also, Pilots are only needed if you want to pull in resources from the planetary stores, I have several completely automated mining bases where I can send a pilot every now and again if I want to re-fill the local machinery(I will refill both the automated processors which have a large storage buffer so that they can be left unsupervised for long periods and a storage module for machinery that can be filled form the Planetary stores when a pilot is present, giving me additional time between visits))

I generally use mid-sized drills.  I currently have self-sustaining bases on Mun, Minmus, Moho, and Duna, and I do not think any of them have strip-miners.

(I may have sent a DIY kit for an automated base expansion with one, but it has not been built yet, and I forget)

Enriched Uranium can be produced by the nuclear fuel processing Tundra module(3.5 only I think) it can take either depleted uranium or urinite as the input.

With one of these on board, I can add new nuclear reactors by just shipping out an empty reactor and fuel it up it on site.

 

I believe that the assembly plant is on the construction tab further down.

Warning on drills: they have a multiplier based on your Geology colonization score for the body in question, and that can cause them to draw a lot more power than is listed in the VAB when you have a high multiplier(and the heat/energy listed in the VAB is per-converter, so the medium one actually uses 3x energy and produces 3x heat when all 3 slots are used.

Also, to deal with the increased heat dissipation needs with higher multipliers, drills got a 10x boost in maximum cooling, which can keep other parts from using the expanding vessel-wide stock radiators.  I recommend using a lot of the Ranger thermal control systems for landed bases that use drills, they provide 4500(I think) cooling on the part they are attached to and any directly connected parts.  I have a number of 2-high nuclear stacks with a tundra cooler on top of the top one.

 

Oh, I saw the DIY kits there, wasn't sure what they were for exactly. Does that mean that to build something on Duna, I have to build it first in the VAB, then package into a box, launch the box from kerbin, and then assemble it? I mean, that sounds really useful, especially with very awkardly shaped contraptions, but the idea of "Oh, I totally forgot XYZ on this mining base, let me just make another" is really appealing. Sometimes I remove solar panels in design to see things better and forget to put them back on. It'd be rage inducing to get all the way to wherever, and then have to wait for another transfer window. I know I can pack extra bits with KAS, but anything with any kind of weight is so awkward it's unbelievable. I know you're supposed to be able to carry stuff on your back somehow, but I haven't figured that out yet. 

 

On to the mining base stuff - Here are two screenshots, like 180 meters apart or something, from attempt one and attempt 2. Attempt one has the automatic drills, a pilot, and it's problem was no power. It's pulling more gypsum and substrate than the other base is. The 2nd base is transmiting power, has two strip miners in it, and has adequate cooling I think? Got some modded up radiators and went nuts with it just to be sure - this save is just for figuring this out. I've cheated my butt off in it. The 2nd base also has an engineer, and a pilot in it. 

I can't for the life of me figure out why the engineer base would pull less. It has an engineer, two MUCH larger drills, and it's in basically the same place. You can see the other vessel in the screenshot. 

 

Aside of that, you're telling me I can just attach two drills to a nuke, make sure the storage containers for whatever I'm mining are set to planetary - and head off? That seems much better than what I'm currently doing. As far as I can tell, I wouldn't even need machinery for that correct? I think I've been overcomplicating the absolute crap out of the planetary logistics bit then. I can totally see making a lifter to just plop down miners here and there and everywhere as I please, and not needing 6-10 kerbals forever mining out in the dunes. The reason I was using pilots, apart from the needing them in logistics, was because they could stay out there forever with a hab. 

 

This is very good news indeed. I can see easily dropping 2-3 mini miners around one huge nuke miner, and power distribution taking care of it completely. Could you show me a screen shot of your miners, so I kind of have an idea? 

 

Also, I'm really confused about the ranger thermal system - I put like 13 of those on my fuel making building, because it says it only cools 12kw and the convert-o-tron 250 needs 200kw. I have the damnedest amount of radiators on that thing you've ever seen. About 40 total, (i don't like the extending ones, they rotate into each other and clip something awful) so I made  an absolute ton of the radials, and put the rangers where I could fit them to add up to 200k. 

 

I am getting the feeling I am completely missing something important here. 

 

[DStaal]

12 minutes ago, Virulent said:

Oh, I saw the DIY kits there, wasn't sure what they were for exactly. Does that mean that to build something on Duna, I have to build it first in the VAB, then package into a box, launch the box from kerbin, and then assemble it? I mean, that sounds really useful, especially with very awkardly shaped contraptions, but the idea of "Oh, I totally forgot XYZ on this mining base, let me just make another" is really appealing. Sometimes I remove solar panels in design to see things better and forget to put them back on. It'd be rage inducing to get all the way to wherever, and then have to wait for another transfer window. I know I can pack extra bits with KAS, but anything with any kind of weight is so awkward it's unbelievable. I know you're supposed to be able to carry stuff on your back somehow, but I haven't figured that out yet.

For one-off small parts like that, I'd suggest looking at OSE Workshops.  It lets you 'print' single items into KIS inventory - so if you've forgotten a solar panel or something, you can make one and attach it.

14 minutes ago, Virulent said:

Aside of that, you're telling me I can just attach two drills to a nuke, make sure the storage containers for whatever I'm mining are set to planetary - and head off? That seems much better than what I'm currently doing. As far as I can tell, I wouldn't even need machinery for that correct? I think I've been overcomplicating the absolute crap out of the planetary logistics bit then. I can totally see making a lifter to just plop down miners here and there and everywhere as I please, and not needing 6-10 kerbals forever mining out in the dunes. The reason I was using pilots, apart from the needing them in logistics, was because they could stay out there forever with a hab.

You'll want an ISRU as well - something with Logistics hub ability.  You'll want to keep track of machinery - things will loose efficiency as their machinery levels drop - but the 'automated' line has a large reserve store of machinery so they'll be good with only occasional service runs.  (Note that you'll want an engineer on the service run - send them with the machinery, have them service the drill platform, and then bring them back.)

[Terwin]

On 6/27/2017 at 11:33 AM, Virulent said:

Oh, I saw the DIY kits there, wasn't sure what they were for exactly. Does that mean that to build something on Duna, I have to build it first in the VAB, then package into a box, launch the box from kerbin, and then assemble it? I mean, that sounds really useful, especially with very awkardly shaped contraptions, but the idea of "Oh, I totally forgot XYZ on this mining base, let me just make another" is really appealing. Sometimes I remove solar panels in design to see things better and forget to put them back on. It'd be rage inducing to get all the way to wherever, and then have to wait for another transfer window. I know I can pack extra bits with KAS, but anything with any kind of weight is so awkward it's unbelievable. I know you're supposed to be able to carry stuff on your back somehow, but I haven't figured that out yet. 

Carrying stuff around is KIS/KAS functionality.  I think the graphic of the item being on the kerbals back was present in an earlier version, but now it just puts a 'carried' label in the inventory.

As far as DIY Kits, yep pretty much.

I will design a base in the SPH, load it onto a standard DIY Kit delivery vessel(some times adding boosters if it is too heavy), then plop it in place with a sky-hook(I attach it to the vessel with 2 large docking ports so I can re-attach the nose after the delivery).

 

Quote

On to the mining base stuff - Here are two screenshots, like 180 meters apart or something, from attempt one and attempt 2. Attempt one has the automatic drills, a pilot, and it's problem was no power. It's pulling more gypsum and substrate than the other base is. The 2nd base is transmiting power, has two strip miners in it, and has adequate cooling I think? Got some modded up radiators and went nuts with it just to be sure - this save is just for figuring this out. I've cheated my butt off in it. The 2nd base also has an engineer, and a pilot in it. 

I can't for the life of me figure out why the engineer base would pull less. It has an engineer, two MUCH larger drills, and it's in basically the same place. You can see the other vessel in the screenshot. 

I believe the automated drills have a production somewhere between that of having a 3 or 4 star engineer on board compared to the other drills.

All of the stock non-expanding radiators need to be either on the part itself, or on the part that the part that needs cooling is attached to, so if it is too far away on the vessel, then as far as the drill is concerned, the radiators do not exist. Looks like your radiators are too far away on the base with the large drills, so the large drills are probably over-heating.

(If you are already modding the radiators, look for 'parentCoolingOnly = true' and remove it if you want it to cool the entire vessel)

Be careful about transmitted power, you may need 6 hours of batteries for background drilling because of catch-up happening in 6 hour chunks.

 

Quote

Aside of that, you're telling me I can just attach two drills to a nuke, make sure the storage containers for whatever I'm mining are set to planetary - and head off? That seems much better than what I'm currently doing. As far as I can tell, I wouldn't even need machinery for that correct? I think I've been overcomplicating the absolute crap out of the planetary logistics bit then. I can totally see making a lifter to just plop down miners here and there and everywhere as I please, and not needing 6-10 kerbals forever mining out in the dunes. The reason I was using pilots, apart from the needing them in logistics, was because they could stay out there forever with a hab. 

The automated drills provide push-only logistics, so yes that would work fine.(automatic Drill, storage set to planetary, power supply and thermal could be combined for a 4 part automated mining base)

I like having a full logistics module present so that I can drop in with a pilot if there is anything I need to pull from planetary logistics.

Of course having all of those pilots on mining rigs does help your colonization bonus grow...

Quote

This is very good news indeed. I can see easily dropping 2-3 mini miners around one huge nuke miner, and power distribution taking care of it completely. Could you show me a screen shot of your miners, so I kind of have an idea? 

 

Also, I'm really confused about the ranger thermal system - I put like 13 of those on my fuel making building, because it says it only cools 12kw and the convert-o-tron 250 needs 200kw. I have the damnedest amount of radiators on that thing you've ever seen. About 40 total, (i don't like the extending ones, they rotate into each other and clip something awful) so I made  an absolute ton of the radials, and put the rangers where I could fit them to add up to 200k.

The ranger thermal control system is just like the other non-extending radiators as far as what they will cool, it must be on the part or a part connected to the part that needs cooling.

Unfortunately most of my current mining stations were built before unmanned logistics was released(and long before GC was added), so they are mostly landed vessels with engineer/pilot and hab.  The only new one I have is on Moho and has habitation and an assembly bay so I can haul up an engineer for a few days to build DIY kits for further expansion.

I can try to come back and attach an image this evening.

Spoiler

 

 

I like OSE Workshops(I started using it just before 1.3 came out), but unfortunately it does not seem to be working with 1.3 just yet.

 

(Come to think of it, it may be time to replace some of those old mining stations...)

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2017 by Terwin
Added pictures

[voicey99]

1 hour ago, Virulent said:

Oh, I saw the DIY kits there, wasn't sure what they were for exactly. Does that mean that to build something on Duna, I have to build it first in the VAB, then package into a box, launch the box from kerbin, and then assemble it? I mean, that sounds really useful, especially with very awkwardly shaped contraptions, but the idea of "Oh, I totally forgot XYZ on this mining base, let me just make another" is really appealing. Sometimes I remove solar panels in design to see things better and forget to put them back on. It'd be rage inducing to get all the way to wherever, and then have to wait for another transfer window. I know I can pack extra bits with KAS, but anything with any kind of weight is so awkward it's unbelievable. I know you're supposed to be able to carry stuff on your back somehow, but I haven't figured that out yet. 

On to the mining base stuff - Here are two screenshots, like 180 meters apart or something, from attempt one and attempt 2. Attempt one has the automatic drills, a pilot, and it's problem was no power. It's pulling more gypsum and substrate than the other base is. The 2nd base is transmitting power, has two strip miners in it, and has adequate cooling I think? Got some modded up radiators and went nuts with it just to be sure - this save is just for figuring this out. I've cheated my butt off in it. The 2nd base also has an engineer, and a pilot in it. 

I can't for the life of me figure out why the engineer base would pull less. It has an engineer, two MUCH larger drills, and it's in basically the same place. You can see the other vessel in the screenshot. 

Aside of that, you're telling me I can just attach two drills to a nuke, make sure the storage containers for whatever I'm mining are set to planetary - and head off? That seems much better than what I'm currently doing. As far as I can tell, I wouldn't even need machinery for that correct? I think I've been overcomplicating the absolute crap out of the planetary logistics bit then. I can totally see making a lifter to just plop down miners here and there and everywhere as I please, and not needing 6-10 kerbals forever mining out in the dunes. The reason I was using pilots, apart from the needing them in logistics, was because they could stay out there forever with a hab. 

This is very good news indeed. I can see easily dropping 2-3 mini miners around one huge nuke miner, and power distribution taking care of it completely. Could you show me a screen shot of your miners, so I kind of have an idea? 

Also, I'm really confused about the ranger thermal system - I put like 13 of those on my fuel making building, because it says it only cools 12kw and the convert-o-tron 250 needs 200kw. I have the damnedest amount of radiators on that thing you've ever seen. About 40 total, (i don't like the extending ones, they rotate into each other and clip something awful) so I made  an absolute ton of the radials, and put the rangers where I could fit them to add up to 200k. 

I am getting the feeling I am completely missing something important here.

<schnip>

You have to ship the DIYKkits in from Kerbin, but they are much smaller and lighter than the vessels they contain the 'blueprints' for contain since you can build them onsite with materialkits. You can't make the DIYKits boxes themselves onsite yet, but support for doing that is in the works. OSE lets you make stuff for attaching with KIS, but you can't use symmetry with KIS so prepare for infuriatingly misaligned parts.

Your manned base's drills are not at full thermal efficiency yet. Also, the engineerless vessel's drills are the automated variants, which means they always operate at at a specialist multiplier of 1, while the manned drills operate on the formula of 0.05+0.2*highest skilled engineer/miner on vessel's level (0-star=lvl 1). This means automated drills are always slightly less efficient than if you had a 4-star engineer on the vessel, if Bill is 0-star then the unmanned drills will be operating at a 5x higher rate than the unmanned drills, possible explaining the discrepancy. This mod is useful for investigating things like this. It also goes without saying that unmanned bases should have auto drills in addition to the unmanned PDUs (the latter of which combine PL push function and optional resource processing).

Not sure what you mean by mini-miners but yes, you can just throw them everywhere. They have to have a module capable of pushing the contents of their kontainers to PL though, which (expanding on @TauPhraim) atm is the two logistics modules or an MPU. Both types can push to PL without a pilot or quartermaster on board (contrary to popular opinion-try it, you don't need one), but the manned logmod requires a pilot to pull stuff out again (but for mining outposts, you don't need that. The PDUs also can't pull even when manned). You don't have to process resources onsite, I prefer to simply ship them to a central processing hub which cuts out the need for maintenance runs. If you do insist on resource processing in-situ, the MPUs and reactors will need servicing by an engineer every...

///////////////	MPUs	Reactors
0.625m	------------------	772d (1.81y)
1.25m	9,259d (21.7y)	1,306d (3.07y)
1.25m (s)	------------------	868d (2.04y)
2.5m	9,259d (21.7y)	1,188d (2.79d)
3.75m	9,259d (21.7y)	1,240d (2.91y)
Tundra	------------------	193d (0.45y)
Duna	------------------	154d (0.36y)

Last time I calculated this, @RoverDude said he was going to buff the uranium capacity for the PDUs.

Also worth of note would be that MPUs (like all machinery-using parts) slow down as they run out of machinery, meaning they use machinery slower. As such, MPUs will never quite run out of machinery but they will run exponentially slower until they are doing almost nothing with barely any machinery left. As for the TCS, completely ignore the max cooling stat-RD wrote some custom code for it whereby it deletes any heat it takes in. Don't worry about it.

@Terwin I tested it, the TCS applies whole-vessel cooling. No need for spamming them.

Edited June 27, 2017 by voicey99

[Terwin]

1 hour ago, voicey99 said:

 As for the TCS, completely ignore the max cooling stat-RD wrote some custom code for it whereby it deletes any heat it takes in. Don't worry about it.

@Terwin I tested it, the TCS applies whole-vessel cooling. No need for spamming them.

Thanks for pointing that out, apparently I had incorrect or out of date information.

Does this mean that a single TCS will handle arbitrary amounts of heat for a landed vessel?

If that is the case, I have a bunch of excess parts I need to get rid of...

[voicey99]

19 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Thanks for pointing that out, apparently I had incorrect or out of date information.

Does this mean that a single TCS will handle arbitrary amounts of heat for a landed vessel?

If that is the case, I have a bunch of excess parts I need to get rid of...

As the max cooling stat is effectively infinity then I suppose a single TCS would be able to cool an unlimited amount of parts assuming none of them produces more than 3GW of heat.

Edited June 27, 2017 by voicey99

[PunkRockZoologist]

Hey, I'm really interested in installing this mod, but I'd just like to know, does it still play well with EPL? I know that the officially supported mod for this one is GC, but I just prefer the mechanics of EPL. Really dislike the parts though, so if this mod offers alternate parts for EPL, I'm 100% on board.

[goldenpsp]

4 minutes ago, PunkRockZoologist said:

Hey, I'm really interested in installing this mod, but I'd just like to know, does it still play well with EPL? I know that the officially supported mod for this one is GC, but I just prefer the mechanics of EPL. Really dislike the parts though, so if this mod offers alternate parts for EPL, I'm 100% on board.

It still works fine.  And I suspect it would work fine for awhile.  EPL has been pretty stable so the MKS EPL config should be fine for the forseeable future.  The only main difference is if this changes in the future someone from the community would have to do a PR to @RoverDude to update it.

[voicey99]

2 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

It still works fine.  And I suspect it would work fine for a while.  EPL has been pretty stable so the MKS EPL config should be fine for the forseeable future.  The only main difference is if this changes in the future someone from the community would have to do a PR to @RoverDude to update it.

The EPL parts that still ship with MKS are going to be removed soon^TM though.

[Virulent]

14 hours ago, voicey99 said:

You have to ship the DIYKkits in from Kerbin, but they are much smaller and lighter than the vessels they contain the 'blueprints' for contain since you can build them onsite with materialkits. You can't make the DIYKits boxes themselves onsite yet, but support for doing that is in the works. OSE lets you make stuff for attaching with KIS, but you can't use symmetry with KIS so prepare for infuriatingly misaligned parts.

Your manned base's drills are not at full thermal efficiency yet. Also, the engineerless vessel's drills are the automated variants, which means they always operate at at a specialist multiplier of 1, while the manned drills operate on the formula of 0.05+0.2*highest skilled engineer/miner on vessel's level (0-star=lvl 1). This means automated drills are always slightly less efficient than if you had a 4-star engineer on the vessel, if Bill is 0-star then the unmanned drills will be operating at a 5x higher rate than the unmanned drills, possible explaining the discrepancy. This mod is useful for investigating things like this. It also goes without saying that unmanned bases should have auto drills in addition to the unmanned PDUs (the latter of which combine PL push function and optional resource processing).

Not sure what you mean by mini-miners but yes, you can just throw them everywhere. They have to have a module capable of pushing the contents of their kontainers to PL though, which (expanding on @TauPhraim) atm is the two logistics modules or an MPU. Both types can push to PL without a pilot or quartermaster on board (contrary to popular opinion-try it, you don't need one), but the manned logmod requires a pilot to pull stuff out again (but for mining outposts, you don't need that. The PDUs also can't pull even when manned). You don't have to process resources onsite, I prefer to simply ship them to a central processing hub which cuts out the need for maintenance runs. If you do insist on resource processing in-situ, the MPUs and reactors will need servicing by an engineer every...

///////////////	MPUs	Reactors
0.625m	------------------	772d (1.81y)
1.25m	9,259d (21.7y)	1,306d (3.07y)
1.25m (s)	------------------	868d (2.04y)
2.5m	9,259d (21.7y)	1,188d (2.79d)
3.75m	9,259d (21.7y)	1,240d (2.91y)
Tundra	------------------	193d (0.45y)
Duna	------------------	154d (0.36y)

Last time I calculated this, @RoverDude said he was going to buff the uranium capacity for the PDUs.

Also worth of note would be that MPUs (like all machinery-using parts) slow down as they run out of machinery, meaning they use machinery slower. As such, MPUs will never quite run out of machinery but they will run exponentially slower until they are doing almost nothing with barely any machinery left. As for the TCS, completely ignore the max cooling stat-RD wrote some custom code for it whereby it deletes any heat it takes in. Don't worry about it.

@Terwin I tested it, the TCS applies whole-vessel cooling. No need for spamming them.

When you say MPU - what do you mean? I'm guessing you mean that to make a miner I have to have a logistics module, either duna or tundra, or an MPU whatever the hell that is - I'm expecting that to mean a ranger box part, though I don't see one. 

Then I look at your graph, and I am led to believe it's a reactor?

 

EDIT : Found it. I wish the menus for MKS were a bit more "correct". Some stuff doesn't even show up in the standard menu, have to go to default. 

Edited June 28, 2017 by Virulent

[voicey99]

2 hours ago, Virulent said:

When you say MPU - what do you mean? I'm guessing you mean that to make a miner I have to have a logistics module, either duna or tundra, or an MPU whatever the hell that is - I'm expecting that to mean a ranger box part, though I don't see one. 

Then I look at your graph, and I am led to believe it's a reactor?

EDIT : Found it. I wish the menus for MKS were a bit more "correct". Some stuff doesn't even show up in the standard menu, have to go to default. 

The MPU is the Mobile Processing Unit, an MKS-brand ISRU that can make LFO/LF/MP/all second-tier MKS resources that only require a single raw ingredient (chems, fert etc., but not refined exotics). It is also designed for unmanned bases, always having a relative crew efficiency multiplier of 100% (see the 'harvesting/conversion multiplier' on this wikipage for what it would be for the stock ISRU). It also has inbuilt PL push function, meaning you don't need a logistics module on your base (or a pilot/quartermaster-you don't need one normally, but I want to specifically debunk the common misconception that you need one for any logistics capability (you did before 0.50.9 but no longer)-both MPUs and the manned log. modules can push to PL unmanned, but the manned ones need a pilot/QM anywhere on the vessel to pull back out of it. MPUs cannot pull at all).

I don't see a problem with the MKS categories. Kolonisation for general (kerbal welfare, utility and base-building structural) parts, logistics for storage and transfer (notable exception: logistics module) and manufacturing for resource extraction and processing. What do you mean by 'standard menu' anyway?

Edited June 28, 2017 by voicey99

[DStaal]

8 hours ago, PunkRockZoologist said:

Hey, I'm really interested in installing this mod, but I'd just like to know, does it still play well with EPL? I know that the officially supported mod for this one is GC, but I just prefer the mechanics of EPL. Really dislike the parts though, so if this mod offers alternate parts for EPL, I'm 100% on board.

As has been said, EL support is present - but the parts (other than the Pioneers) are being phased out.  If you don't like the EL parts, take a look at this part pack - it's basically dedicated EL replacement parts:

 

[PunkRockZoologist]

7 minutes ago, DStaal said:

As has been said, EL support is present - but the parts (other than the Pioneers) are being phased out.  If you don't like the EL parts, take a look at this part pack - it's basically dedicated EL replacement parts:

 

Wow thanks! That one looks excellent. Will still definitely consider MKS too. I really love the Nom-o-matic Greenhouse modules.

[goldenpsp]

5 hours ago, voicey99 said:

The EPL parts that still ship with MKS are going to be removed soon^TM though.

Quote for that?  I must have missed that announcement.  Even so the EPL config would still work for the path to materialkits etc.  And the parts that work as a survey station would still be there.  The only MKS parts would be the launchpad and orbital construction part, both of which have EPL parts you can use instead.

[voicey99]

6 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Quote for that?  I must have missed that announcement.  Even so the EPL config would still work for the path to materialkits etc.  And the parts that work as a survey station would still be there.  The only MKS parts would be the launchpad and orbital construction part, both of which have EPL parts you can use instead.

This, from back in Feb.

On 05/02/2017 at 3:38 PM, RoverDude said:

<schnip>

Regarding EL, nothing will conflict with it.  But note that in the future, the EL specific parts will be removed, and any support would take the form of an optional config file.

<schnip>

[goldenpsp]

Just now, voicey99 said:

This, from back in Feb.

Cool thanks.  I never really  cared anyway as 99% of my EPL was via survey station builds anyhow.

[voicey99]

6 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

Cool thanks.  I never really  cared anyway as 99% of my EPL was via survey station builds anyhow.

Me neither, since I like to challenge myself to ship all the modules in from KSC. Even of that means a 8-yr wait (with the moar power doctrine to get there faster) for the kerbals on Plock to get a new TV.

Edited June 28, 2017 by voicey99

[cordilon]

Hey everyone,

I've been playing around with the Ground Construction mod that is bundled with MKS for some hours now, but I just can't really figure out how the (work) efficiency works. In the description of the standalone GC mod it says that every crew part adds to the efficiency, because it automatically gets the corresponding module, but this doesn't seem to work for me. Whatever I do, the efficiency of the 2.5m Tundra Workshop stays at 100% or 300% respectively for the 3.75m Assembly Plant.

Further a lot of free living space is supposed to give more efficiency, too, but I couldn't get that to work either.

After some time I got really frustrated, cause four engineers would still take 3 days to build the tiniest of rovers.
I'm a Kerbal with a fairly high stupidity rating, so if anyone could feed this to me in more or less simple words, I would be very grateful!

KSP version is 1.2.2 with MKS 0.50.18 and a great bunch of other mods that I can list if it becomes nessecary.

[voicey99]

2 minutes ago, cordilon said:

Hey everyone,

I've been playing around with the Ground Construction mod that is bundled with MKS for some hours now, but I just can't really figure out how the (work) efficiency works. In the description of the standalone GC mod it says that every crew part adds to the efficiency, because it automatically gets the corresponding module, but this doesn't seem to work for me. Whatever I do, the efficiency of the 2.5m Tundra Workshop stays at 100% or 300% respectively for the 3.75m Assembly Plant.

Further a lot of free living space is supposed to give more efficiency, too, but I couldn't get that to work either.

After some time I got really frustrated, cause four engineers would still take 3 days to build the tiniest of rovers.
I'm a Kerbal with a fairly high stupidity rating, so if anyone could feed this to me in more or less simple words, I would be very grateful!

KSP version is 1.2.2 with MKS 0.50.18 and a great bunch of other mods that I can list if it becomes nessecary.

The version of GC that comes with MKS is exactly the same as the standard GC as far as mechanics go. You should probably ask this in the GC thread.

[Terwin]

4 minutes ago, cordilon said:

Hey everyone,

I've been playing around with the Ground Construction mod that is bundled with MKS for some hours now, but I just can't really figure out how the (work) efficiency works. In the description of the standalone GC mod it says that every crew part adds to the efficiency, because it automatically gets the corresponding module, but this doesn't seem to work for me. Whatever I do, the efficiency of the 2.5m Tundra Workshop stays at 100% or 300% respectively for the 3.75m Assembly Plant.

Further a lot of free living space is supposed to give more efficiency, too, but I couldn't get that to work either.

After some time I got really frustrated, cause four engineers would still take 3 days to build the tiniest of rovers.
I'm a Kerbal with a fairly high stupidity rating, so if anyone could feed this to me in more or less simple words, I would be very grateful!

KSP version is 1.2.2 with MKS 0.50.18 and a great bunch of other mods that I can list if it becomes nessecary.

Available Living space affected MKS production efficiency in previous versions of MKS, and has nothing to do with GC.

The workshop efficiency of the part that your engineer is in will affect the amount that that engineer contributes to the task.

Also be aware that a 2 star engineer contributes twice as much as a 1 star engineer, and a 5 star engineer contributes 5 times as much as a 1 star engineer.

Basically it is engineering stars * workshop part efficiency contributed towards the build task each hour.(Engineers must be in the workshop part to be counted, and you need to assign that workshop to work on the project)

I believe a recent update also allows 0 star engineers to contribute, but I do not know how much impact they have.

I could easily see 3 0-star engineers taking a very long time to build something.

I have a fairly large rover that I will be using as a mobile assembly plant that will take almost 7 days to complete for a 3 star engineer in a 300% workshop, so several-day build times are perfectly normal.  Also, each part has it's own build time, so a large rover that mostly consists of an empty fuel tank may well get built faster than a tiny rover with two of each science module.

[voicey99]

Is there a cfg module that can be added a part file or MM patch to manually make a non-USI part a logistics consumer that can scavenge resources?

EDIT: It's ModuleLogisticsConsumer. I was misspelling it as ModuleResourceConsumer.

Edited June 28, 2017 by voicey99

[Wyzard]

On 6/26/2017 at 11:24 PM, TheRagingIrishman said:

The confusing thing is that the tundra module is a pioneer and a logistics center put together (the name is "MKS Tundra Pioneer - Logistics Module") while the Duna series has two separate parts ("MKS Duna Logistics Center" and "MKS Duna Pioneer Module"). The 1 part vs 2 parts isn't going to change but if you have a better way to inform players, let me know and I'll add it.

"MKS Tundra Pioneer - Logistics Module" makes it look like "Tundra Pioneer" is the part's name and "Logistics Module" is what it does.  Maybe change it to "Pioneer + Logistics" so it's more clear that they're two separate functions.