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

[DStaal]

23 hours ago, Idleness said:

General ask re: the mono-propellant engines from NF Spacecraft - what are their use cases generally?  Other than variety - which is great and why I love these mods - do these singles and clusters that use mono-propellant have a particular niche that gets filled?  Just looking for some more in-depth understanding as someone who's only recently gotten back into the game after a long hiatus.  Cheers.

I like them as they simplify my design, as the craft only needs one fuel for both main thrust and for docking/maneuvering.  This then means I only need one type of fuel tank, and that I don't have to work quite as hard on how much of each type of fuel I need.

Also, a couple of them have the option of integrated fuel tanks - gives you a nice small boost in DV, and on some craft is all the DV you need, which can compact the craft more.

The 2.5m engine also nicely fits a docking port inside the ring of engines - I've used this to make nearly 100% reusable resupply drones.  (Heat shield on front, parachutes on the sides, it backs up to dock - the only non-resusable part is the fairing.)

On a personal note, I tend to think of monoprop as a more 'reliable' fuel - LFO is better if you need the DV, but I'll stick to monoprop as a personal choice for engines that are going to require lots of restarts, as technically it would be simpler, in my opinion.

[Nertea]

On 12/6/2018 at 4:01 AM, Dafni said:

Oh, okay, thank you. Well then I have to change my question if anybody has a link to the imgur album of those new pods please? They dont seem to be included in the album in the OP, but I clearly remember scrolling through an album with those pods.

Many thanks in advance for your time.

Daf

I have an eventual action to update these albums, but I don't have time to make new renders anytime soon. 

[mrvice]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

I have an eventual action to update these albums, but I don't have time to make new renders anytime soon. 

sorry i don´t know how to quote you in another way. 

Ksp 1.5.1 
Near Future Aeronautics

Creating a 2nd entry in right click part menu for air intakes the same action thats already in by default.
EDIT: also the 2nd option that does get added for some reason has no function at all

Picture:
https://imgur.com/a/wtfVBGM

Intake Air ATM: is this still working? because it never changes to 0 even the engines have 0 air left and are not working anymore
( read somewhere else squad took that out completly )

EDIT:
"Workaround"
Deleting "NFAeroIntakeAtm"  from "NearFutureAeronautics\Patches"
seems to fix the problem did not got any errors and intake air from alternate resource panel is working as it should
i think that intakeairatm is definetly not working anymore and causing issues.

Edited December 7, 2018 by mrvice
additional information

[JH4C]

5 hours ago, mrvice said:

Intake Air ATM: is this still working? because it never changes to 0 even the engines have 0 air left and are not working anymore
( read somewhere else squad took that out completly )

Intake Air is the stock resource, Intake Atm is a community resource for engines that require gas to pass through them as part of their propulsion cycle but it doesn't need to be oxygenated, so you can use props or some jets on other planets than Kerbin/Laythe. It won't go down unless you're in a situation where it needs to be used, but that's not a bug.

[mrvice]

7 hours ago, JH4C said:

Intake Air is the stock resource, Intake Atm is a community resource for engines that require gas to pass through them as part of their propulsion cycle but it doesn't need to be oxygenated, so you can use props or some jets on other planets than Kerbin/Laythe. It won't go down unless you're in a situation where it needs to be used, but that's not a bug.

ah.... ok did not know that....

So the doubled entry in right click part menu for open/close intake air is normal?

so that means i could use jet engines in space? propelling them with gas instead of air..... but wich gas and how to get that kind of gas? ( little confused)

[JH4C]

10 hours ago, mrvice said:

So the doubled entry in right click part menu for open/close intake air is normal?

Yes, one's the intake for IntakeAir, the other's the intake for IntakeAtm.

10 hours ago, mrvice said:

so that means i could use jet engines in space?

No, because there's no air or atmosphere in space.

17 hours ago, JH4C said:

you can use props or some jets on other planets than Kerbin/Laythe.

You still need an atmosphere to use intakes and engines that recognise IntakeAtm, it just doesn't need to be an oxygen-rich atmosphere; this means they can function on Duna, Eve, maybe even Jool, etc. as well as other mod-created planets. Examples of such engines would be nuclear jets and electric fans; neither of these care what the composition of the atmosphere is, they just need to be able to move it around in order to propel your craft.

[Xurkitree]

There is a pretty big bug in Near Future Electrical, and it concerns electricity and Life support. I have a large mothership in orbit around Eve, powered by a nuclear reactor from Near Future Electrical.The nuclear reactor's power output has been toned down to such a level that it can maintain Life Support with a small surplus. The problem is, whenever I switch away from the vessel, the vessel seemingly doesn't produce power at all, and charge slowly drains and then TAC-LS reports that the ship is out of electricity - BUT the crew somehow remain alive barely. But at warp, sometimes TAC-LS ends up killing the crew and this is a problem because it forces me to reload. Whenever I switch to the vessel however, the reactor starts filling the batter banks again.

What's happening?

I'm running 1.5, along with the most recent versions of both mods.

[Streetwind]

@Xurkitree - Not a bug. That's how KSP works. When you shift focus away from a vessel, it no longer does anything. It doesn't produce thrust, it doesn't generate power, it doesn't consume power, it doesn't process anything, the heat simulation is offline, collisions do not happen, and so on. For all intents and purposes, it stops existing entirely.

There are way around this, although they are sort of awkward. For example, if you have a stock ISRU module onboard, you can run it while the vehicle isn't focused. How? Well, the moment you switch back to that vehicle, the simulation plays catch-up. It remembers how long ago you left it alone, so it will do all the processing for the missing time at once when you come back to it. The heat simulation does that same. The reason this is awkward is because it isn't precise - how does the catchup routine know how the illumination of your solar panels changed while you were away? How does it know that the fuel cell you were using would not have had enough fuel to keep going that long? It just doesn't. Also, when the heat simulation catches up, you sometimes get huge temperature spikes that can actually damage parts on your spacecraft.

Another way around this is doing real background processing for all existing vessels. There used to be a mod that did this, but it was only really compatible with stock and a very small selection of modded parts. Every single part that wanted to use it had to be individually patched to be compatible.

TAC-LS for its part is doing its life support calculations independently from the vessels. It just remembers that vessel X has this amount of resources and uses them at that particular rate, so it determines that it needs to send you a warning in so many days. The vessel itself still doesn't actually consume or calculate anything; instead it will play catch-up when you load it again.

Now, I haven't touched TAC-LS in a long time, so I don't know how sophisticated its tracking of vessel resources has become. Maybe it is able to recognize if a vessel has positive EC generation and can factor that in. But in that case, the reactor should work. Or it doesn't have this capability, in which case no source of power (not stock solar panels, not fuel cells, not RTGs) would work, and you would get the same warning no matter what. Or, it is selective about which power sources it accepts - for example fuel cells might not be accepted because they can run out of fuel without TAC-LS noticing. In that case, you'll have to talk to the TAC-LS people and ask them to make NFE reactors a trustworthy power source.

 

Edited December 9, 2018 by Streetwind

[MaximumThrust]

@Xurkitree @Streetwind

I played with TAC-LS some time ago, and it used a background processing system, which was both demanding and generate all kind of errors and problems, specially with EC and Life-Support in general, and none of the fixes I found worked. It also don't accept NFE reactors, fuel cells and had problems with tracking solar panels, etc. The vessels behaved very differently when warping loaded and in the background. In my experience, it was not worth it, and I changed to USI-LS, which uses the stock system, that works well, is very simple and reliable (maybe except for the heat generation problem, which for me never caused any serious problem). USI-LS don't track what's happening in the background and the tool in-flight don't show real times, but you can trust all the times given in the VAB/SPH, and use Kerbal Alarm Clock. When loading the vessels, everything goes where it should be.

To not be unfair, I think I used version 0.13.6.0,  and the changelog says that version 0.13.8.0 had a fix regarding Ec usage: 

"Fix issues with EC consumption - Correct delta time check and not recording last EC usage when EC runs out resulting in never ending shortage in both scenario where window can be open and cannot."

And have this in its first page:

"From version 0.13.2 TAC LS will consume and produce EC for unloaded vessels.  EC Production currently only includes Solar Panels and Generators.
You can turn off background resource processing in the Difficulty Settings for TAC LS."

Generators = The module generator, the same used in the RTG.

So, it don't accept the use of NFE Reactors in the first place, but even if you use a support method, I don't recommend it, or at least recommend you do a serious amount of testing in other save game, before committing to it.

[Streetwind]

@MaximumThrust Thanks for the info, I'll keep it in mind in case we get more TAC-LS related questions.

[Xurkitree]

whoops totally forgot about that

[Nertea]

I mean fundamentally it's because NFE does some background processing, building off the stock converter mechanics, but TAC does something different. Totally internal to that mod, nothing I can do to solve it.

[Gryphorim]

Just noticed the hummingbird engine exhaust doesn't expand at low atmo pressure. Intentional?

[PocketBrotector]

I am enjoying the new pods in NF Spacecraft... however I noticed that the Hummingbird engine description mentions a podded version is available, even though the engine doesn't have any variants. Is this an error in the engine description or maybe an unimplemented feature of the engine?

[CobaltWolf]

14 hours ago, Gryphorim said:

Just noticed the hummingbird engine exhaust doesn't expand at low atmo pressure. Intentional?

That's not possible without additional mods.

[Plane Crazy]

The lift fans are supposed to be able to run without oxygen in electrical drive mode right?

I brought one to Duna and it says it needs oxygen, even though it is set in electric mode.

Running KSP 1.5 with all NFT mods.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Plane Crazy

[JadeOfMaar]

@Plane Crazy The lift fans are particularly ineffective in thin atmosphere. Duna's sea level pressure is too low for them. That's just FYI. As for saying it needs Oxygen (if it actually says it needs Oxygen) or any other possible problem I don't know. But what you described does not look like the Localization bug that breaks IntakeAtm.

Edited December 23, 2018 by JadeOfMaar

[JH4C]

12 hours ago, Plane Crazy said:

I brought one to Duna and it says it needs oxygen, even though it is set in electric mode.

I can't see anything in that screenshot that suggests it needs Oxygen. The fuel availability next to the staging shows that it runs off of EC and IntakeAtm, which is the "any atmosphere" resource. You probably need more intakes to balance the rarified air.

[ctbram]

Not sure which near future pack it is in but I put a pair of "shielded clamp-o-tron jr.'s" on two ships then went to dock with them and tried to target the shielded clamp-o-tron and I just get a message "No target selected" so now I have a ship that needs to be docked to and cannot target its docking port.  (hurray).  I guess I could take a regular clamp-o-tron jr up and attach it with kas but it would be nice if someone could tell me if this is a known bug?

 

I am running 1.5.1 and have a lot of other mods that could be causing the issue but thought I'd ask here first.

[Sokol_323]

Yes, this is a bug in the mod. They wrote about it before. I also encountered this behavior of the docking port.

[RedDwarfIV]

None of the lift fans were showing up in the part editor. I looked at the cfg files and I thought the problem was that they were listed as "category = propulsion" rather than "category = engine", but changing this didn't seem to do anything.

[mikegarrison]

On 12/8/2018 at 8:09 PM, Xurkitree said:

There is a pretty big bug in Near Future Electrical, and it concerns electricity and Life support. I have a large mothership in orbit around Eve, powered by a nuclear reactor from Near Future Electrical.The nuclear reactor's power output has been toned down to such a level that it can maintain Life Support with a small surplus. The problem is, whenever I switch away from the vessel, the vessel seemingly doesn't produce power at all, and charge slowly drains and then TAC-LS reports that the ship is out of electricity - BUT the crew somehow remain alive barely. But at warp, sometimes TAC-LS ends up killing the crew and this is a problem because it forces me to reload. Whenever I switch to the vessel however, the reactor starts filling the batter banks again.

What's happening?

I'm running 1.5, along with the most recent versions of both mods.

This is a known interaction between TAC-LS, Near Future, and the way the game handles unfocused and high time-warp ships. I would suggest it is really up to TAC-LS to fix it.

I love the idea of playing with life support mods due to the added design requirements (and the fact that they make all these Near Future greenhouses and fish tanks etc. worthwhile). But all of them have been ultimately too buggy for me to deal with. This is really a KSP2 type of change.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, RedDwarfIV said:

None of the lift fans were showing up in the part editor. I looked at the cfg files and I thought the problem was that they were listed as "category = propulsion" rather than "category = engine", but changing this didn't seem to do anything.

Make sure they are researched. If you have added the mod to an existing career or science mode save, the parts will not be unlocked by default. Even if you have all the nodes in the tech tree already. In such a case, if you go into the R&D building, you'll see that some of the nodes show up marked with little numbers, denoting locked parts within them. Click these nodes and "research" them again (at no cost), and you will have your parts.

If that is not your issue, though, you'll have to supply more information. "It doesn't work" isn't exactly the most precise description of a problem...  

 

Edited January 4, 2019 by Streetwind

[RedDwarfIV]

9 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Make sure they are researched. If you have added the mod to an existing career or science mode save, the parts will not be unlocked by default. Even if you have all the nodes in the tech tree already. In such a case, if you go into the R&D building, you'll see that some of the nodes show up marked with little numbers, denoting locked parts within them. Click these nodes and "research" them again (at no cost), and you will have your parts.

If that is not your issue, though, you'll have to supply more information. "It doesn't work" isn't exactly the most precise description of a problem...  

 

I'll try that, thanks!

[fg45de]

Hello,

i have a problem with the Grip-O-Tron Linear Docking Connector. I have two vessels each connected with a Linear Docking Connector. If i put both docking connectors within 2m range, they attract each other. But they dont dock. Is this a known bug or am i doing something wrong with these linear docking ports?

Everything works well. I was just a bit impatient. Just took me a while for the correct docking procedure.

Edited January 9, 2019 by fg45de