Nertea Posted February 23, 2017 Author Share Posted February 23, 2017 On 2/21/2017 at 6:05 PM, Shawarmakriger said: Quick question, I can't stick anything on the side of the Whirlijig Nuclear Reprocessor. Is this on purpose, to make radiating heat more difficult than just taping radiators on the side? Thanks in advance. This was intentional at time of model construction, as it is an animated model and the idea was to not attach anything to parts with moving bits. Now that we have the ability to specify which areas of a model are surface attachable, it could be time to revise this, so I created this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eberkain Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 Near future spacecraft includes two engine folders with a total of seven different engine names, but in-game there are only 4 engines. Trying to figure out why none of the NFSpacecraft engines have Real Fuel support on my install. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 5 hours ago, eberkain said: Near future spacecraft includes two engine folders with a total of seven different engine names, but in-game there are only 4 engines. Trying to figure out why none of the NFSpacecraft engines have Real Fuel support on my install. Reviewing the latest changelogs occasionally helps, you know The folder without the dash in the name contains three old engines that have been deprecated. They are still shipped so that people who update the mod don't lose their existing ships, but they can no longer be researched or seen in the editor unless you manually edit the config files to re-enable them. The folder with the dash contains four new engines. They are what you can access ingame. They likely don't have RealFuels support because they are new, and nobody added compatibility for them yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eberkain Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 3 hours ago, Streetwind said: Reviewing the latest changelogs occasionally helps, you know My bad, I always read the changelogs, but I've been looking at and testing so many mods lately I forgot. Real Fuels - Stockalike has configs for 3 engines and I was just trying to figure out why I wasn't seeing that in-game. Are the new engines close enough to the old engines that those configs would still be usable with a rename? Or are the new engines dramatically different? I went back and looked at the most recent changelog and it wasn't mentioned there, so the new engines must have been added farther back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 Latest patch was a hotfix, yes. Full changelog is always included in download. I don't know anything about RealFuels configs, stockalike or not, so I can't answer that question. You could try it out. But you could also just revive the three old engines and remove the four new ones. Going into the old configs and changing TechRequired and category to have proper values is all that's required. Sounds like the least work-intensive solution to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DStaal Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 3 hours ago, eberkain said: My bad, I always read the changelogs, but I've been looking at and testing so many mods lately I forgot. Real Fuels - Stockalike has configs for 3 engines and I was just trying to figure out why I wasn't seeing that in-game. Are the new engines close enough to the old engines that those configs would still be usable with a rename? Or are the new engines dramatically different? I went back and looked at the most recent changelog and it wasn't mentioned there, so the new engines must have been added farther back. I doubt the new engines are close enough, really - the new ones are monoprop while the old were LFO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nertea Posted February 28, 2017 Author Share Posted February 28, 2017 Hey everyone! As we get closer to NFT feature-complete, it's time for a major balance pass. Streetwind and I are going to be having a look at the stats of nearly everything in NFT. If you have a part that you think is too heavy, too light, too expensive, etc, feel free to make a comment here and we will look into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddiew Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 Great stuff @Nertea and @Streetwind! Near Future is a thing I have included in my last... 3? 4? careers? Basically since I learned about it, so I'm glad to see it maturing. If there's one thing I'd really like to see from NF, it's actually... and sorry to say it because I'm a professional software dev and I know the pain... documentation For example, if I want to ISRU to get Argon... what do I do? If I have depleted uranium, and want to enrich it, what's the conversion ratio of the Whirligig? Can I feed it ore to get enriched uranium, or is there a convert-o-tron patch included? Is it possible to be 100% self sufficient for all NF resources with ISRU? How do I know how much <NF resource> is available at a planet? When a reactor says "a long time" - does that mean forever? What's a good solar panel to use at Jool? Are there any solar panels that produce anything of value at Eeloo? How do I transfer enriched uranium (without writing a cheaty MM patch as I recently did)? And what's the intended purpose of capacitors and why would I favour them over batteries? A few example ships/probes would be wonderful too, especially at the larger scales I find it hard to put together something with 3 crew, decent range, and good TWR, and I'm not sure if that's me being an ignoramus or because it's outside the scope of the mod... Also, just my 2p, but all ore processing units in KSP are too light. Something tells me that one does not turn rocks into rocket fuel in a 1-ton device... I personally would be ok with a 20 ton monstrosity of a Whirligig that you park in orbit and return to with ore because to hell with these all-in-one miner-processor-landers. But maybe that's just me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smotheredrun Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 (edited) @eddiew, that is an interesting idea, leaving the monstrosity in orbit. I may just try to make something like that for my Jool 5 attempt. In fact, this gives me a few......................... I'll be back in a bit, I just got an idea! Thanks!!!!! Edited March 1, 2017 by smotheredrun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 (edited) 11 hours ago, eddiew said: If there's one thing I'd really like to see from NF, it's actually... and sorry to say it because I'm a professional software dev and I know the pain... documentation For example, if I want to ISRU to get Argon... what do I do? If I have depleted uranium, and want to enrich it, what's the conversion ratio of the Whirligig? Can I feed it ore to get enriched uranium, or is there a convert-o-tron patch included? Is it possible to be 100% self sufficient for all NF resources with ISRU? How do I know how much <NF resource> is available at a planet? When a reactor says "a long time" - does that mean forever? What's a good solar panel to use at Jool? Are there any solar panels that produce anything of value at Eeloo? How do I transfer enriched uranium (without writing a cheaty MM patch as I recently did)? And what's the intended purpose of capacitors and why would I favour them over batteries? We discussed doing some KSPedia pages at one point. It kind of fell out of focus due to christmas season and being busy with other things, but it may still be done at some point. I've had a few ideas that I never really got around to putting on paper, figuratively. And it does help to hear what kind of questions arise for people during gameplay with these mods Mind you, some of the example questions you gave are general "how to play KSP" questions and out of scope for Near Future articles. 11 hours ago, eddiew said: A few example ships/probes would be wonderful too, especially at the larger scales I find it hard to put together something with 3 crew, decent range, and good TWR, and I'm not sure if that's me being an ignoramus or because it's outside the scope of the mod... Depends on your definition of 'decent range' and 'good TWR', but I'd wager it's a mix of the two. Don't expect to regularly get 0.5 Kerbin-relative TWR or higher with any electrical engine while pushing a payload - heck, some of them don't even have that much base TWR by themselves after factoring in power generation requirements. These engines are intentionally not offering the same playstyle as chemical engines. Plan a Mangalyaan Maneuver, do periapsis kicking, install Better Timewarp Continued. Alternatively, try Kerbal Atomics for slightly more TWR while still getting better-than-chemical Isp. Example ships were provided in the past, but were tedious to maintain through update after update and as such were discontinued. Perhaps once the mod has had its final content update, some new ones could be added. 11 hours ago, eddiew said: Also, just my 2p, but all ore processing units in KSP are too light. Something tells me that one does not turn rocks into rocket fuel in a 1-ton device... I personally would be ok with a 20 ton monstrosity of a Whirligig that you park in orbit and return to with ore because to hell with these all-in-one miner-processor-landers. But maybe that's just me Out of scope for Near Future, which aims to remain reasonably close to stock. It stats its parts according to similar parts in stock KSP. It only acticely changes one stock part right now - the Dawn engine - and that one's out of sheer necessity, not because we feel like Squad didn't drink enough realism Kool-Aid. Making random changes to parts, or having too much unrelated content in one package, just leads to a mod which is attractive to less people rather than more. This is also one of the reasons why NFT is distributed in five separate sub-packs, and not one giant bundle. (Personal example: I've always wanted to use Ven's Stock Revamp for its graphics overhaul, but that mod makes so many random author's-personal-preference part changes under the hood that I cannot justify having it in my install. Just trying to manually clean it up took so much effort that I abandoned the attempt and simply threw the mod out. And this is coming from a person who spends more time hand-customizing config files than actually playing the game.) Edited March 1, 2017 by Streetwind Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nergal8617 Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 I was wondering, and I apologize if this has been asked before, have you ever considered adding an LH2 tank option to the octo girder from NF Construction? It would seem to fit well with Cryogenic Engines. Or am I just missing a config file somewhere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddiew Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 Cheers for the answers @Streetwind As it happens, @JadeOfMaar wrote a small NF help guide a few hours after I posted here. Maybe worth linking on the front page of this thread? For range and TWR, I'm thinking landers that can handle Tylo, tbh - but I suspect that's beyond the reach of electric engines even at the top tier. Which is ok, because it switches my focus to using NF for carrier ships that park up in 1000km orbit with vast range in the tanks. And since fuel is a relatively small part of the mass, adding many km/s doesn't really have much effect on their TWR - it's just low all the time Just a paradigm shift that I need to get my head round really. Regarding "how to play ksp" questions, I guess the standout there was solar panels, which I'm sure I could indeed check up the generation at Jool for any stock panel and do some quick multiplications to figure out what the NF panel will produce. It might be nice to have something simple in the descriptions like "recommended for inner solar system use" or "when all other panels fail, this one still delivers", but that's just me being lazy I get your point about maintaining a stock balance, that's fine. I may write myself some MM configs to increase the size of the Whirligig and Convert-o-Trons, just for my personal play style. I feel awkward packing a refining rig into a 25 ton spaceplane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeOfMaar Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 @eddiew I've thought of putting a note in my NFT tutorial about SSTOs and crewed landers in general. The idea of ion SSTOs are out of scope imo but a nice thing to experiment with, and I'm already pushing the limit approaching things that can launch at nearly 0.4 surface gravity so forget about Tylo capable ascent vehicles. Spaceplanes are more troublesome because folding radiators, while so much more powerful than the static ones, will get torn off in any atmosphere. What should I include in there next, though? ( @Streetwind suggestion?) The Whirljig is good. It may seem quite OP but the thing is I expect you'll quite rarely need to use it. If you love mining you'll be even less likely as finally, you can produce EnrichedUranium without having to install MKS, and I'm quite happy for that. I have yet to mine Ore for Lithium or use the Whirljig as I spend far more time doing dev or designing craft than even trying to play a long-term game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 (edited) 3 hours ago, eddiew said: Regarding "how to play ksp" questions, I guess the standout there was solar panels, which I'm sure I could indeed check up the generation at Jool for any stock panel and do some quick multiplications to figure out what the NF panel will produce. It might be nice to have something simple in the descriptions like "recommended for inner solar system use" or "when all other panels fail, this one still delivers", but that's just me being lazy The thing is, any solar panel you choose will behave the same. Solar power scales with 1/r², where r is the distance from the sun ("inverse square law"). So if you pick an OX-STAT panel, it will have 100% nominal output in Kerbin orbit (because KSP defines sun power in relation to "home"), and 4% nominal output at Jool. If you pick a Gigantor, it will have 100% nominal output at Kerbin, and 4% nominal output at Jool. If you pick a Near Future blanket array, it will have 100% nominal output at Kerbin, and 4% nominal output at Jool. Notice a trend? Sure, solar panels differ based on how much mass they take for a given nominal output at Kerbin, and how much physical area they require, and so on. Those are the figures you use in the VAB to decide on which solar panels to pick for Kerbin orbit operation. But because all panels scale the same, you use the exact same criteria to pick panels for Jool. You just have to mount 25 times as many to get the same total power, that's all the difference there is. A table with the exact values for all stock planets is somewhat unfortunately hidden in the KSP Wiki article on electric charge. 30 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said: What should I include in there next, though? ( @Streetwind suggestion?) As eddiew mentioned, transferring uranium, refueling and repairing reactors is a particularly poorly documented topic. Admittedly it's also something that most players never encounter - I think when we had a poll in the old thread at once point, only one single person stepped up to admit they had ever needed to refuel something - but it's currently something you have to learn from doing it wrong and repurposing the error messages as an on-the-spot tutorial. Edited March 1, 2017 by Streetwind Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeOfMaar Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 1 minute ago, Streetwind said: As eddiew mentioned, transferring uranium, refueling and repairing reactors is a particularly poorly documented topic. Admittedly it's also something that most players never encounter - I think when we had a poll in the old thread at once point, only one single person stepped up to admit they had ever needed to refuel something - but it's currently something you have to learn from doing it wrong and repurposing the error messages as an on-the-spot tutorial. Sounds quite legit. So far I only encountered the need to learn to refuel a reactor and that was when I had EL bases on Kerbin's moons in KSP 1.1.3 and I needed to topup reactors built at these bases. Ore -> EnrichedUranium didn't exist yet and I had to do some digging through the old NFT thread to learn to do it, then I could bother shipping it from Kerbin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddiew Posted March 1, 2017 Share Posted March 1, 2017 1 hour ago, Streetwind said: As eddiew mentioned, transferring uranium, refueling and repairing reactors is a particularly poorly documented topic. Admittedly it's also something that most players never encounter - I think when we had a poll in the old thread at once point, only one single person stepped up to admit they had ever needed to refuel something - but it's currently something you have to learn from doing it wrong and repurposing the error messages as an on-the-spot tutorial. Tbh, I learned about the issues transferring enriched uranium from Kerbal Atomics ^^; I wrote an MM patch to make it pumpable like fuel... but I assumed there was meant to be a proper way of doing it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nertea Posted March 2, 2017 Author Share Posted March 2, 2017 Documentation I certainly want to do, probably in both an online (KSPedia) and offline (well, but really online...) wiki thing. The former is something I very much do want to work in before 1.0. As Streetwind mentioned, it has lapsed a bit... but we'll probably get back to it. The latter would be a good place to put tutorial, examples, etc. Example ships too. Once the rebalance is done we could do a kind of submission thing for ships (chances are you will want to tweak stuff you build now. Meh, that uranium transfer thing. I'm really not hugely fond of it. I spent some time trying to simplify it a bit - making it so either of the fuels were only pumpable when a L3+ engineer was onboard, but that didn't seem to be possible. I do want it to be a bit harder/an additional consideration than a regular fuel, but I haven't settled fully on how to do that yet. Now that rebalance: I'm aiming to target it as a "second-last" update, meaning that all major content should be added before then. That means there's probably going to be a few NF versions before it happens, but do note that there will be a lot of tweaks, changes and I can't be totally sure that all your ships will still work right. Consider this fair warning! 13 hours ago, Nergal8617 said: I was wondering, and I apologize if this has been asked before, have you ever considered adding an LH2 tank option to the octo girder from NF Construction? It would seem to fit well with Cryogenic Engines. Or am I just missing a config file somewhere? This should occur automatically if you have CRP installed as of the latest (well, second latest) version of NFC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eberkain Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 Rebalance only looking at Near Future, or will it also include Cryo Engines etc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nertea Posted March 2, 2017 Author Share Posted March 2, 2017 1 minute ago, eberkain said: Rebalance only looking at Near Future, or will it also include Cryo Engines etc? Everything I make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hesp Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 At the moment the only things that may need a tweak are the MkIV spaceplane parts and engines positions in the tech tree (i.e. the AE-4 turboramjet is available a node earlier than the whiplash). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nertea Posted March 2, 2017 Author Share Posted March 2, 2017 6 minutes ago, Hesp said: At the moment the only things that may need a tweak are the MkIV spaceplane parts and engines positions in the tech tree (i.e. the AE-4 turboramjet is available a node earlier than the whiplash). If you've got some specifics for things that may need a tweak, it would be nice to hear them... but in the MkIV thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nergal8617 Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 7 hours ago, Nertea said: This should occur automatically if you have CRP installed as of the latest (well, second latest) version of NFC. Thanks for the info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hesp Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 18 hours ago, Nertea said: If you've got some specifics for things that may need a tweak, it would be nice to hear them... but in the MkIV thread Ok, I'll post there! Thought you wanted to collect all the rebalance suggestions in a single thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nertea Posted March 2, 2017 Author Share Posted March 2, 2017 (edited) 28 minutes ago, Hesp said: Ok, I'll post there! Thought you wanted to collect all the rebalance suggestions in a single thread That's a fairly good point in some ways, but MkIV is mostly independent from NFT/CT/KA. It's considerably easier to balance because there are nice stock equivalents to almost everything. But yes, I expect an essay :P. Go nuts! Edited March 2, 2017 by Nertea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nertea Posted March 3, 2017 Author Share Posted March 3, 2017 Sooo... starting to draft up the next set of replacement engine models. First, this is new 2.5m VASIMR. I went with a triple nozzle design and made it much longer. It's now something like halfway between the current squat cluster and the older, longer model. Here we have the revised 2.5m PIT, which will keep the bits I like (nozzle area) and add more structural components and power conversion equipment. In addition, I had a solid start at the newest 3.75m reactor, which is the last planned new part for NFE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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