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

[gamerscircle]

Just now, maranble14 said:

This is kind of what the mod Simple Construction does. But it doesn't use material kits, just rocket parts. You could probably alter the recipes yourself though if you wanted

I thought I read or heard something.. [perhaps it was a dream]  that MKS did it and perhaps I had a bad install or something.  Alright, well - I will just have to get the drills to work harder.. 

[DStaal]

26 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

I have a random question, was there a way that an ISRU [or another part] could convert ore to Material Kits?

I believe MKS-Lite used to do this.  But kinda the point of MKS is managing the production chain.

(OSE Workshop - which also uses MaterialKits - may have something.)

[Windspren]

Could someone explain Planetary Logistics to me? I have a Logistics module on my Duna base, but the Kolonization dashboard shows nothing for the PL section.

1 hour ago, DStaal said:

I believe MKS-Lite used to do this.  But kinda the point of MKS is managing the production chain.

(OSE Workshop - which also uses MaterialKits - may have something.)

OSE Workshop lets you convert Ore to MaterialKits, but MKS as a MM patch that makes OSE use the MKS resource chain.

[Supermarine]

Hello friends, me bothering you with a question again.

I understand that there's a "grace period" of 15 K-days for kerbonauts outside the home planet's range (IIRC it's 25 Km default). After this time, non-orange guys just go on strike. Ok, so far so good, but I have observed something strange: twice I've launched a 3-kerbed capsule and not 15 k-minutes pass and the report for these guys says "expired". As it happens, if I attach a mini supply pack to the craft they finish the stuff and the 15 days' period activates normally, but not from the start. Why does this happen?

The only thing I changed from the default config was the homesick parameter (added an extra zero just to see how it changed).

I have installed MKS, KIS, KAS, EL, CRP and USI-LS. Everything works fine, including the life support cycle.

[fritobandito]

2 hours ago, gamerscircle said:

I have a random question, was there a way that an ISRU [or another part] could convert ore to Material Kits?

The Ground Construction mod includes an ISRU patch that enables Ore -> Material Kits. It's extremely unbalanced.

Edited March 6, 2017 by fritobandito

[Kaa253]

8 hours ago, RoverDude said:

- Wait 450 days.

Ah! I was wondering about Kerbal biology. Now we know 

[jd284]

2 hours ago, Supermarine said:

I understand that there's a "grace period" of 15 K-days for kerbonauts outside the home planet's range (IIRC it's 25 Km default). After this time, non-orange guys just go on strike. Ok, so far so good, but I have observed something strange: twice I've launched a 3-kerbed capsule and not 15 k-minutes pass and the report for these guys says "expired". As it happens, if I attach a mini supply pack to the craft they finish the stuff and the 15 days' period activates normally, but not from the start. Why does this happen?

This is really a topic for the USI Life Support thread, but it's probably this bug. It's only a display issue though, it incorrectly says expired during the grace period. Your guys should not be tourists though and work normally until the actual end of the grace period.

[voicey99]

6 hours ago, gamerscircle said:

I have a random question, was there a way that an ISRU [or another part] could convert ore to Material Kits?

The ISRU did convert ore to MKTs at some point in a very recent version, but it was a bug and removed in the next patch.

[ExavierMacbeth]

8 hours ago, Laythe Dweller said:

Could someone explain Planetary Logistics to me? I have a Logistics module on my Duna base, but the Kolonization dashboard shows nothing for the PL section.

Which logistics module specifically?

You need to have either the "Duna" Logistics Center or the Tundra Pioneer Module with a Pilot in the module plus a warehouse storage module with Planetary Logistics enabled on it (Pretty much any of the USI Kontainer Storage Tab stuff). That will allow you to push/pull just about anything into or out of PL.

The recent patch though added some unmanned refineries that will Push stuff into PL without the need of a pilot for remote mining bases but your main base will still need the above to pull anything out of it.

[smokytehbear]

3 hours ago, voicey99 said:

The ISRU did convert ore to MKTs at some point in a very recent version, but it was a bug and removed in the next patch.

Keridian Dynamics has a 3D printer unlocked at the intermediate stages of the tech tree that can convert ore to material kits. Don't remember the node but it's somewhere down the main construction lines. Maybe Advanced Actuators?

[Terwin]

5 hours ago, voicey99 said:

The ISRU did convert ore to MKTs at some point in a very recent version, but it was a bug and removed in the next patch.

GC will let you generate MK from the stock ISRU, MKS now has a (MM?) config to disable this.

There was a period after GC was added before the MKS change when you could generate MK from ore.  I did this on my unmanned Ike base while I could(even though I may never land anything that can make use of them). 

[RoverDude]

@Terwin - close   GC-Core (what MKS uses) does not modify stock at all, since MKS has MK production built in.  GC-Full (which you would use if you were not using MKS) includes the stock config.  This was one of the reasons for breaking the two out

[sh1pman]

@RoverDude I have a slight problem with my Mun base. It doesn't have a lot of parts, but the framerate goes way down when I focus on it. But it gets much worse when I use timewarp, down to about 3 fps at maximum timewarp. The base itself consists only of MKS and stock parts and has some drills and converters running in the background. Is this normal?

[Kobymaru]

2 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

@RoverDude I have a slight problem with my Mun base. It doesn't have a lot of parts, but the framerate goes way down when I focus on it. But it gets much worse when I use timewarp, down to about 3 fps at maximum timewarp. The base itself consists only of MKS and stock parts and has some drills and converters running in the background. Is this normal?

I don't know about "normal" but it certainly happens to me too.

Framerate goes down on time-warp, when you'd think it goes up because the part physics simulation is disabled. I think it might be all the converters and MKS modules running, but I can't say for certain because my base has a very large part count.

Could you maybe upload your save?

[sh1pman]

@Kobymaru sure, when I get back home. It doesn't have many converters, mostly greenhouses, drills and Ranger smelters. I'll check if the framerate drops if I turn the converters off.

P.S. It is also disconnected, and has several ISMs and Redi-packs communicating with each other via scavenging logistics. I'll see if turning the warehouses off helps.

Edited March 6, 2017 by sh1pman

[Supermarine]

7 hours ago, jd284 said:

This is really a topic for the USI Life Support thread, but it's probably this bug. It's only a display issue though, it incorrectly says expired during the grace period. Your guys should not be tourists though and work normally until the actual end of the grace period.

Thanks for the reply!

I checked the link and yes, it is probably a variant of that bug. I'll try to reproduce it. Since I had orange kerbonauts in both capsules everything was fine. Maybe with regular kerbals the same situation will happen. Good to know it's on the radar now, thanks!

 

[gamerscircle]

10 hours ago, fritobandito said:

The Ground Construction mod includes an ISRU patch that enables Ore -> Material Kits. It's extremely unbalanced.

Ah ha!  That is where it came come, but my ISRU' no longer have the ability, is that because GC that I have installed is from the MKS vs the stand alone?  Unbalanced?  Well, darn it.

[sh1pman]

11 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

Ah ha!  That is where it came come, but my ISRU' no longer have the ability, is that because GC that I have installed is from the MKS vs the stand alone?  Unbalanced?  Well, darn it.

Of course it's unbalanced. You're not supposed to get the good stuff with just one part, that's not how MKS works 

Edited March 6, 2017 by sh1pman

[gamerscircle]

6 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Of course it's unbalanced. You're not supposed to get the good stuff with just one part, that's not how MKS works 

Oh oh.. burn?  [ LOL ]  I don't mind doing the hard work with MKS, just would not like to see a repeat of the Rover Massacre of 2016.  [this is when Mr. RD, did something to the connection nodes on the rover wheels?  Each and every single one of my rovers on the MUN would launch off the ground, do a back flip and land on the top side.

 

http://i.imgur.com/xyCTTlu.png

[Wyzard]

I'm trying to build an automated refinery using the new MPUs and automated drills, but I'm having a problem with cooling: if I run even one small drill, my nuclear reactor overheats, even though I have plenty of radiator capacity.

Specifically, I have a test vessel with eight MEU-100-A automated pulse drills, one 0.625m USI nuclear reactor, and four of the medium stock TCS extendable radiators.  The drills say "required cooling: 50kW" in the part description, and the reactor says "required cooling: 200kW", so the eight drills plus reactor total 600kW of required cooling.  The radiators say "core heat xfer: 250kW", so I think four of them (1000kW) should be enough to run everything.

Testing on the launchpad with no mods except MKS installed: if I extend the radiators and start all the drills (but not the reactor), they all heat up to 500K and stay there, as expected.  But if I instead start just one drill plus the reactor, the drill heats to 500K but the reactor quickly exceeds its target of 1000K.  This seems strange to me, because the reactor's required cooling is less than the seven other drills.  If I stop the one drill, the reactor cools down to 1000K.

I admit that I don't really understand KSP's radiator mechanics — I don't know the difference between "required cooling" and "max cooling" on a heat-generating part, or between "core heat xfer" and "max cooling" on a radiator.  I notice, though, that the MEU-100 and MEU-100-A pulse drills have "required cooling: 50kW" but "max cooling: 1000kW".  The stock Drill-O-Matic Junior has 50kW for both.  I don't know why the USI drill's max cooling is so much higher than the similar stock drill, but if I edit the .cfg to change it from 1000 to 50, the problem above doesn't happen; the reactor stops heating when it reaches 1000K (at least, with just one drill running).

(With just MKS installed, the reactor doesn't overheat by much — its temperature stabilizes a little above 1000K, and thermal efficiency is still pretty high, so it's not a big problem.  But I normally use Near Future Electrical, which changes how nuclear reactor heat works, and the reactor overheats far beyond its target temperature and ends up damaging itself.  I know that's not an MKS problem, but I'm puzzled as to why it overheats at all, even with just MKS.)

[sh1pman]

9 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

every single one of my rovers on the MUN would launch off the ground, do a back flip and land on the top side.

Guess they were really happy about the changes 

[voicey99]

1 hour ago, Wyzard said:

I'm trying to build an automated refinery using the new MPUs and automated drills, but I'm having a problem with cooling: if I run even one small drill, my nuclear reactor overheats, even though I have plenty of radiator capacity.

Specifically, I have a test vessel with eight MEU-100-A automated pulse drills, one 0.625m USI nuclear reactor, and four of the medium stock TCS extendable radiators.  The drills say "required cooling: 50kW" in the part description, and the reactor says "required cooling: 200kW", so the eight drills plus reactor total 600kW of required cooling.  The radiators say "core heat xfer: 250kW", so I think four of them (1000kW) should be enough to run everything.

Testing on the launchpad with no mods except MKS installed: if I extend the radiators and start all the drills (but not the reactor), they all heat up to 500K and stay there, as expected.  But if I instead start just one drill plus the reactor, the drill heats to 500K but the reactor quickly exceeds its target of 1000K.  This seems strange to me, because the reactor's required cooling is less than the seven other drills.  If I stop the one drill, the reactor cools down to 1000K.

I admit that I don't really understand KSP's radiator mechanics — I don't know the difference between "required cooling" and "max cooling" on a heat-generating part, or between "core heat xfer" and "max cooling" on a radiator.  I notice, though, that the MEU-100 and MEU-100-A pulse drills have "required cooling: 50kW" but "max cooling: 1000kW".  The stock Drill-O-Matic Junior has 50kW for both.  I don't know why the USI drill's max cooling is so much higher than the similar stock drill, but if I edit the .cfg to change it from 1000 to 50, the problem above doesn't happen; the reactor stops heating when it reaches 1000K (at least, with just one drill running).

(With just MKS installed, the reactor doesn't overheat by much — its temperature stabilizes a little above 1000K, and thermal efficiency is still pretty high, so it's not a big problem.  But I normally use Near Future Electrical, which changes how nuclear reactor heat works, and the reactor overheats far beyond its target temperature and ends up damaging itself.  I know that's not an MKS problem, but I'm puzzled as to why it overheats at all, even with just MKS.)

I've had this issue with MKS before (even without NFE), it seems the MKS reactors quite often just don't play nice with deployable radiators. I find the best solution is simply to use fixed radiator panels on the reactors as the reactor is the only thing they would be able to expend their cooling on (note: req'd cooling is how much heat a part generates at 100% load, max cooling is the highest amount of radiator capacity it can consume (i.e. if it is overheating and you switch another radiator on), max cooling is the maximum heat a radiator can draw in total and core heat xfer is the max heat a radiator can draw from a single part).

[Wyzard]

2 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

I find the best solution is simply to use fixed radiator panels on the reactors as the reactor is the only thing they would be able to expend their cooling on

I did try putting fixed panels on the reactor (actually on its parent part, which I think should also work), but still had the problem.  That was with NFE, though; I didn't try that design with just MKS.  I'll do some more testing later.

2 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

req'd cooling is how much heat a part generates at 100% load, max cooling is the highest amount of radiator capacity it can consume (i.e. if it is overheating and you switch another radiator on)

Makes sense, though it's hard to imagine when the USI drill would ever need to consume 1000kW of radiator capacity if it only produces 50kW of heat at 100% load.  You'd have to be running it at 2000% load to need that much cooling.

I'm wondering if the drills' huge max-cooling is somehow allocating all the radiator capacity (despite not needing it) and leaving none for the reactor.  (They don't seem to interfere with each other, though, only with the reactor.)

2 minutes ago, voicey99 said:

max cooling is the maximum heat a radiator can draw in total and core heat xfer is the max heat a radiator can draw from a single part

In that case, a single medium TCS ought to be able to handle everything:  its 250kW core heat transfer is greater than any of the individual parts, and its max cooling is 19494kW, far more than the vessel's total heat production.

Do you know what "transfer rate: 10.00%" and "cools up to 4x part temp" mean on a radiator?

[DStaal]

3 minutes ago, Wyzard said:

Makes sense, though it's hard to imagine when the USI drill would ever need to consume 1000kW of radiator capacity if it only produces 50kW of heat at 100% load.  You'd have to be running it at 2000% load to need that much cooling.

Which isn't impossible with Kolonization and production bonuses...

[voicey99]

1 minute ago, Wyzard said:

I did try putting fixed panels on the reactor (actually on its parent part, which I think should also work), but still had the problem.  That was with NFE, though; I didn't try that design with just MKS.  I'll do some more testing later.

Makes sense, though it's hard to imagine when the USI drill would ever need to consume 1000kW of radiator capacity if it only produces 50kW of heat at 100% load.  You'd have to be running it at 2000% load to need that much cooling.

I'm wondering if the drills' huge max-cooling is somehow allocating all the radiator capacity (despite not needing it) and leaving none for the reactor.  (They don't seem to interfere with each other, though, only with the reactor.)

In that case, a single medium TCS ought to be able to handle everything:  its 250kW core heat transfer is greater than any of the individual parts, and its max cooling is 19494kW, far more than the vessel's total heat production.

Do you know what "transfer rate: 10.00%" and "cools up to 4x part temp" mean on a radiator?

I believe the "part temp" bit is the maximum times hotter than the cooling target it can be (so it can cool parts 1/4 of the temperature of the radiator), not sure about the transfer rate. Ask RD, he wrote this stuff. And with Kolonisation bonuses, efficiency parts and those with DrillSkill on board, 2000% load is very much a realistic prospect.