[1.12.x] Near Future Technologies (September 6)

[Streetwind]

Perhaps KSP 1.3.1 changed something about heat mechanics again. It wouldn't be the first time that ModuleCoreHeat (the stock module that NF reactors also use) suddenly acted differently after a patch, especially under time warp. KSP's heat simulation has historically had many problematic edge cases under high timewarp.

...are you on 1.3.1, actually? You never specified. If not, it would be interesting to see if updating to 1.3.1 fixes it. I recall one person having issues one or two months back with reactor heat and time warp on a 1.3.0 build of NF, though he made it sound like it was with any sort of time warp.

[Nertea]

16 hours ago, aluc24 said:

@Nertea, I would like to report a bug. Sometimes a Reactor Core from NF Electric overheats during high time warp, although it is perfectly fine in low time warp or real-time. I only noticed it with MX-0 so far. I usually use a single small radiator panel to cool it, and it's enough, even when the reactor is at 100% output. But as soon as I warp, it overheats and shuts down.

That sounds like you're running 1.3.0. 1 small radiator provides 50 kW of cooling and the MX-0 requires 150 kW. A bug in 1.3.0 had all core heat producers slightly broken in that they would appear to be fine at low or no time warp no matter how much cooling was needed (you could cool the biggest reactor with the smallest radiator). However at high warp the "real behaviour" would assert itself. 

I just loaded up the latest NFE in 1.3.1, created a test ship consisting of a command pod, MX-0 and medium TCS (250 kW) and warped all over the place with no problems. So either you've got a mod conflict or 1.3.0.

16 hours ago, aluc24 said:

Also, sometimes when I warp (with reactor output lowered to work around this bug), I get a message saying "A producer of electric charge has incoherent behavior at high warp speed. Unload the vessel before warping".  This message comes from Kerbalism addon. It only does this for NF reactors, all other electricity sources work fine.

 

That's Kerbalism's problem fully. They do weird things with EC across the board...

[aluc24]

 

5 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Perhaps KSP 1.3.1 changed something about heat mechanics again. It wouldn't be the first time that ModuleCoreHeat (the stock module that NF reactors also use) suddenly acted differently after a patch, especially under time warp. KSP's heat simulation has historically had many problematic edge cases under high timewarp.

...are you on 1.3.1, actually? You never specified. If not, it would be interesting to see if updating to 1.3.1 fixes it. I recall one person having issues one or two months back with reactor heat and time warp on a 1.3.0 build of NF, though he made it sound like it was with any sort of time warp.

4 minutes ago, Nertea said:

That sounds like you're running 1.3.0. 1 small radiator provides 50 kW of cooling and the MX-0 requires 150 kW. A bug in 1.3.0 had all core heat producers slightly broken in that they would appear to be fine at low or no time warp no matter how much cooling was needed (you could cool the biggest reactor with the smallest radiator). However at high warp the "real behaviour" would assert itself. 

I just loaded up the latest NFE in 1.3.1, created a test ship consisting of a command pod, MX-0 and medium TCS (250 kW) and warped all over the place with no problems. So either you've got a mod conflict or 1.3.0.

That's Kerbalism's problem fully. They do weird things with EC across the board...

 

You were both right: I forgot to update to 1.3.1. Doing that fixed the problem. Sorry for the false alarm! As for the message from Kerbalism, I will report it to Kerbalism thread. Thank you!

[Nertea]

Glad we could help!

[Starbuckminsterfullerton]

I took some screenshots messing around with the NFLV stuff and 7-man pod back awhile back and then promptly forgot about them, but since I found them I figured I might as well share... 

Album a/O3Dux will appear when post is submitted

...ugh the album embed thing never works, link to rest I don't want to spam the thread with giant images...

https://imgur.com/a/O3Dux

Edited November 10, 2017 by Starbuckminsterfullerton

[DrStalker]

I'm having a similar overheating  issue to aluc24, in KSP 1.3.1 and without any other mods that affect temperature.

Enabling the "ignore max temperature" cheat and warping will sometimes flash heat bars on all parts at maximum temperature for a fraction of a second, as if the thermal simulation glitched slightly and ignore heat dissipation for just a moment.

I'll try and see if I can reproduce it reliably.

 

 

 

[Wyzard]

Speaking of thermal stuff, I finished setting up a mining base yesterday with a USI MKS "Duna PDU" reactor modded by the NearFutureElectrical reactor patch, and I found that the stock ore drill and ISRU parts overheat, even though the base has enough cooling — yet the reactor and USI drills don't overheat, strangely.  It seems to be related to the change from ModuleCoreHeat to ModuleCoreHeatNoCatchup: if I comment out the "@name = ModuleCoreHeatNoCatchup" line in NFElectricalUSIReactors.cfg, the drill and ISRU parts don't overheat.  (But then I get NREs every frame in FissionReactor.HandleCoreDamage(), so it's not usable as a workaround.)

I'll do some more investigation later, and try to make a test save with only NearFuture parts instead of my whole MKS base.  But I won't have time to do that today, and maybe not tomorrow either, so I wanted to at least mention the issue now in case anyone else can chime in.

[Lathari]

Has anyone else had any problems with OKEB-75 blanket array and Ferram?

I decided to update my tourist boat, and suddenly it became almost impossible to manage. After second spinning re-entry I decide to look at FAR debugging voxels and whole VAB lit up. Without blanket array fairing was the outer surface, with OKEB-75, madness.

Spoiler

  No wonder I lost about 200 m/s delta-v on launch and spun at ridiculous speeds on re-entry.

If known issue, sorry, but I couldn't find any posts.

[Nertea]

On 11/11/2017 at 5:25 AM, DrStalker said:

Enabling the "ignore max temperature" cheat and warping will sometimes flash heat bars on all parts at maximum temperature for a fraction of a second, as if the thermal simulation glitched slightly and ignore heat dissipation for just a moment.

 

Considering the very limited amount that this mod interacts with the system that is affected by thermal bars, this would seem to be unrelated.

On 11/11/2017 at 7:32 AM, Wyzard said:

Speaking of thermal stuff, I finished setting up a mining base yesterday with a USI MKS "Duna PDU" reactor modded by the NearFutureElectrical reactor patch, and I found that the stock ore drill and ISRU parts overheat, even though the base has enough cooling — yet the reactor and USI drills don't overheat, strangely.  It seems to be related to the change from ModuleCoreHeat to ModuleCoreHeatNoCatchup: if I comment out the "@name = ModuleCoreHeatNoCatchup" line in NFElectricalUSIReactors.cfg, the drill and ISRU parts don't overheat.  (But then I get NREs every frame in FissionReactor.HandleCoreDamage(), so it's not usable as a workaround.)

That's weird. Let me know if you can reproduce it in a nice reliable fashion. 

[Guest]

@Nertea The config for the PX-STAT 1x2 solar panel (config name solarpanel-static-truss-1) is missing a line saying rescaleFactor = 1 after the MODEL section closes (compare with solarpanel-static-truss-2). Without this, each panel is a bit bigger than on the 1x4 version. With it, the individual panels in both arrays become the same size, which they are presuambly meant to be, as different configurations of the same product.

[Nertea]

On 11/13/2017 at 12:22 AM, Rocket Witch said:

@Nertea The config for the PX-STAT 1x2 solar panel (config name solarpanel-static-truss-1) is missing a line saying rescaleFactor = 1 after the MODEL section closes (compare with solarpanel-static-truss-2). Without this, each panel is a bit bigger than on the 1x4 version. With it, the individual panels in both arrays become the same size, which they are presuambly meant to be, as different configurations of the same product.

Thanks, good to know. I'll get that fixed next version.

[Nightside]

51 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Thanks, good to know. I'll get that fixed next version.

You probably already know this but I've recently learned that rescaleFactor = 1.25 is the default value, though it may depend on what method is used to define the model/mesh.

[Nertea]

Indeed, I suspect that archaic part cfg is derived from some stock part that doesn't have said line in it. 

[Wyzard]

On 11/11/2017 at 10:32 AM, Wyzard said:

Speaking of thermal stuff, I finished setting up a mining base yesterday with a USI MKS "Duna PDU" reactor modded by the NearFutureElectrical reactor patch, and I found that the stock ore drill and ISRU parts overheat, even though the base has enough cooling — yet the reactor and USI drills don't overheat, strangely.  It seems to be related to the change from ModuleCoreHeat to ModuleCoreHeatNoCatchup: if I comment out the "@name = ModuleCoreHeatNoCatchup" line in NFElectricalUSIReactors.cfg, the drill and ISRU parts don't overheat.  (But then I get NREs every frame in FissionReactor.HandleCoreDamage(), so it's not usable as a workaround.)

On 11/12/2017 at 2:26 PM, Nertea said:

That's weird. Let me know if you can reproduce it in a nice reliable fashion. 

I did some experimentation in a clean install without other mods, and the problem seems to be that the NFE reactor is consuming far more radiator capacity than it ought to, leaving too little for other parts that need cooling.  I think at least part of that is a known stock issue, but there might be something specific to NFE as well.  I can't tell for sure.

Here's a screenshot showing thermal debug info for a test craft I made (in KSP 1.3.1) with only NFE and HeatControl installed:

The parts' "required cooling" values shown in the VAB are 150kW for the reactor, 50kW for each of the 4 drills, and 200kW for the ISRU, for a total of 550kW required cooling.  The XR-1000 radiator's "core heat xfer" is 1000kW, so I think just one of them ought to be enough for these parts, but two of them are deployed and the ISRU is slowly overheating.  (Deploying a third XR-1000 stops the overheating, though.)

The thing to look at is the parts' "RadUsage" numbers: the reactor is apparently using ten times as much radiator capacity as the ISRU.  I'm not sure where those numbers come from.  I think they represent kilowatts of heat transfer allocated from the radiators, but the reactor's "required cooling" and "max cooling" are both less than the ISRU's (150/150 vs. 200/750), so I'd expect it to use less of the radiators' cooling capacity.  Also, the reactor's "max cooling" is 150kW, so it's weird for it to be allocated more than 1800kW of radiator cooling.  (In contrast, the drills' "max cooling" is 100kW, and they've maxed out at just slightly under 100.)

I've seen weirdness with radiator cooling allocation with other mods too — in particular, USI has a drill that's a lot like the small stock one, but with ten times the "max cooling", and it ends up getting ten times the radiator capacity.  I think that's just a stock quirk, and if the MX-0 had a "max cooling" of 7500kW (ten times the ISRU), I'd say it was probably just the same thing happening here.  But this reactor's "max cooling" is nowhere near that big, so it's not clear why it's taking so much radiator capacity.  Since NFE reactors produce their heat with a custom module, I'm wondering if it might be an NFE-specific bug.

(Also strange: if you add the reactor's and ISRU's RadUsage numbers together, it matches the active radiators' total "core heat transfer" — including if you retract a radiator, or extend more of them — but if you also add in the drills' RadUsage, it seems as if the vessel is using more total cooling capacity than the radiators actually provide.  I don't think I fully understand the game's heat mechanics.)

 

[nandhii]

edit : solved my problem  myself

Edited November 19, 2017 by nandhii

[trigger77]

On 11/11/2017 at 5:39 PM, Lathari said:

Has anyone else had any problems with OKEB-75 blanket array and Ferram?

I decided to update my tourist boat, and suddenly it became almost impossible to manage. After second spinning re-entry I decide to look at FAR debugging voxels and whole VAB lit up. Without blanket array fairing was the outer surface, with OKEB-75, madness.

  Reveal hidden contents

  No wonder I lost about 200 m/s delta-v on launch and spun at ridiculous speeds on re-entry.

If known issue, sorry, but I couldn't find any posts.

Same problem here, I've been trying to launch a relay probe using the OKEB-75 for hours, having my rocket flip for no apparent reason. Like you, I checked FAR's debugging info, and finally narrowed the problem down to this solar array.

[Nertea]

 

3 hours ago, trigger77 said:

Same problem here, I've been trying to launch a relay probe using the OKEB-75 for hours, having my rocket flip for no apparent reason. Like you, I checked FAR's debugging info, and finally narrowed the problem down to this solar array.

Does FAR also have trouble with the other SMR-based arrays? OKEB-500 to be exact?

11 hours ago, Wyzard said:

Here's a screenshot showing thermal debug info for a test craft I made (in KSP 1.3.1) with only NFE and HeatControl installed:

 

After some tests this is so confusing. Check your screenshot - see the ISRU producing 1100 kW? That's coming from the core, which shouldn't be producing anywhere near that much! I see all the converters' usages fluctuating all over the map and using far more capacity than they should. I'll keep looking into this though.

 

11 hours ago, Wyzard said:

I don't think I fully understand the game's heat mechanics.

I doubt anyone does, devs included. 

[SpaceMouse]

@Nertea, do you have any 3D projects besides KSP?

[Lathari]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

 

Does FAR also have trouble with the other SMR-based arrays? OKEB-500 to be exact?

 

Here are OKEB-100 and OKEB-500:

Spoiler

Album https://imgur.com/a/Ah2Sg will appear when post is submitted

OKEB-100

OKEB-500

Hope this helps to narrow it down.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Lathari
Something borked.

[AirArs]

My game crashes with both Near Future Construction and Electrical on Hexo-Strut-Adapter-01 and Battery-125

[maja]

9 hours ago, AirArs said:

My game crashes with both Near Future Construction and Electrical on Hexo-Strut-Adapter-01 and Battery-125

 

[Nertea]

Near Future Electrical 0.9.8

• Updated B9PartSwitch to 2.0.0
• Fixed an possible issue with reactor radiator consumption
• Updated DynamicBatteryStorage to 1.2.0
  •  Fixed a bug that caused the buffer to be destroyed every second time it was created
  •  Fixed solar panel handling when Kopernicus is installed

Near Future Solar 0.8.8

• Fixed scaling of large fixed solar array
• Adjusted suncatcher location of Trio solar array
• Reexport of OKEB-75 solar array, might help FAR problem, might not.

@Wyzard This NFE release may help that heat bug you noticed. It will at least resolve the debug UI overconsumption.... not sure if that will do anything else. 

[Wyzard]

15 hours ago, Nertea said:

@Wyzard This NFE release may help that heat bug you noticed. It will at least resolve the debug UI overconsumption.... not sure if that will do anything else.

I tried out the new release with my Minmus base (where I originally encountered the problem), but now the base's reactor overheats (instead of the ISRU):

• When I visited the base after not having loaded it in a few (in-game) days, the reactor overheated very rapidly and melted down within seconds.  RadUsage was changing constantly, decreasing (surprisingly), but at the earliest I was able to catch it, it was using 465992 out of a RadCap of 600000.  (RadCap is pretty big because I'd put enough radiators on this base to work around the problem in 0.9.7.)
• I went back to NFE 0.9.7, loaded a save from before the reactor overheated, and visited the base just to let it do its catch-up.  Then I re-upgraded to 0.9.8 and opened the base again (after just a few seconds of in-game time).  This time the reactor overheated more slowly, around 2 degrees per second, but still fast enough to melt down within a few minutes.  RadUsage was just 350, which is too low.  (The reactor on this base is an MKS "Duna" PDU, modded by NFElectricalUSIReactors.cfg.  Its "required cooling" is 2500kW, but I'm running it at 25% so I think it really needs 625kW.)
• For comparison, in 0.9.7, the reactor's RadUsage holds steady at about 8108, even during catch-up.

I'll try to do some more testing later.

[Nertea]

42 minutes ago, Wyzard said:

I tried out the new release with my Minmus base (where I originally encountered the problem), but now the base's reactor overheats (instead of the ISRU):

• When I visited the base after not having loaded it in a few (in-game) days, the reactor overheated very rapidly and melted down within seconds.  RadUsage was changing constantly, decreasing (surprisingly), but at the earliest I was able to catch it, it was using 465992 out of a RadCap of 600000.  (RadCap is pretty big because I'd put enough radiators on this base to work around the problem in 0.9.7.)
• I went back to NFE 0.9.7, loaded a save from before the reactor overheated, and visited the base just to let it do its catch-up.  Then I re-upgraded to 0.9.8 and opened the base again (after just a few seconds of in-game time).  This time the reactor overheated more slowly, around 2 degrees per second, but still fast enough to melt down within a few minutes.  RadUsage was just 350, which is too low.  (The reactor on this base is an MKS "Duna" PDU, modded by NFElectricalUSIReactors.cfg.  Its "required cooling" is 2500kW, but I'm running it at 25% so I think it really needs 625kW.)
• For comparison, in 0.9.7, the reactor's RadUsage holds steady at about 8108, even during catch-up.

I'll try to do some more testing later.

So in every test that I have done, in isolation the reactors perform exactly as they should. Ignoring the debug values and going by adding up core transfer numbers, any combinations of reactors work just fine.

I have to conclude that (again) there's a critical bug in stock to work around. Here's some testing of my own.

This base has enough radiators deployed to run the reactor at full power (800 kW) plus 4 drills at regular power or 2 drills at max power (200kW)

1) The reactor is enabled, nothing is enabled. Perfect stability, perfect radUsage (800kW expected, 799.98 kW used)
2) A single drill is enabled (+50kW, up to +100kW). The reactor immediately overheats and and its radUsage has dropped by ~175 kW, suggesting a lack of radiators on the base
3) 4 more small radiators are deployed, + 200 kW radiation capacity. The overheat slows, but radUsage is still 738 so the reactor will overheat. 
4) I can stabilize the reactor by increasing the capacity by another 50 kW. So that one drill is using something like 350 kW of cooling.

By this we can conclude that any stock BaseConverter module is somehow requesting far, far more radiator capacity than it needs, even though the debug does not show it. This makes absolutely no sense. 

[RaiderMan]

*tilts head* ...sense? what is sense? is it edible?