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

[Nertea]

30 minutes ago, siklidkid said:

But i can't change the variants of the parts.

Like for the crossway from stockalike station parts, Without b9 part switch i can't change the number of points.

You don't need to change anything. The warning is not important.

[ChrisSpace]

I can't find Near Future Aeronautics in CKAN. Is it unavailable there?

[Judicator81]

30 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

I can't find Near Future Aeronautics in CKAN. Is it unavailable there?

No, Near Future Aeronautics is not available on CKAN. From the very first post in this topic:

Quote

Q: CKAN Support Questions?
A: Talk to CKAN folks, CKAN is not supported. This is because KerbalActuators, a dependency of this mod, is specifically NOT listed on CKAN. 

[linuxgurugamer]

@Nertea

A question about the code: I'm looking to have a small atomic engine (part of the Orbital Tug mod) to have the following characteristics: 

Runs on Monopropellant or Liquid Fuel (currently implemented)

Be able to dump additional fuel into the engine for a short burst of power, after which the engine will lose all power while it warms up again (the extra fuel dumped will be wasteful, give the extra oomph, but in doing so cools down the core so that it takes a bit of time to warm up again)

It was suggested the the NFE code might be useful, but I'm not sure if I see anyway to do this.  The Vasimr engines seem to possibly be able to do some of this, I'm going to guess that the code is the : VariableIspEngine.cs and VariablePowerEngine.cs

So, two questions:  First, would you be interested in a PR to add this ability to the code?  And second, if not, would it be ok with you if I used the code as a basis for what I want to do?  While the license gives me permission, I won't use it if you don't want me to.  Of course, I would provide attribution if you so agree.

Thanks in advance

 

[theJesuit]

Hi @Nertea,

Just opened an issue on Github.  NFSolar I think is missing the nfs-static-truss-3 in its CTT patch.

 

Peace.

[Nertea]

4 hours ago, theJesuit said:

Hi @Nertea,

Just opened an issue on Github.  NFSolar I think is missing the nfs-static-truss-3 in its CTT patch.

 

Peace.

I'm not certain that's not intentional but I'll check.

15 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

@Nertea

A question about the code: I'm looking to have a small atomic engine (part of the Orbital Tug mod) to have the following characteristics: 

Runs on Monopropellant or Liquid Fuel (currently implemented)

Be able to dump additional fuel into the engine for a short burst of power, after which the engine will lose all power while it warms up again (the extra fuel dumped will be wasteful, give the extra oomph, but in doing so cools down the core so that it takes a bit of time to warm up again)

It was suggested the the NFE code might be useful, but I'm not sure if I see anyway to do this.  The Vasimr engines seem to possibly be able to do some of this, I'm going to guess that the code is the : VariableIspEngine.cs and VariablePowerEngine.cs

So, two questions:  First, would you be interested in a PR to add this ability to the code?  And second, if not, would it be ok with you if I used the code as a basis for what I want to do?  While the license gives me permission, I won't use it if you don't want me to.  Of course, I would provide attribution if you so agree.

Thanks in advance

 

I... don't think anything in the plugins has the capacity to do things like that. The closest thing  would be VariablePowerEngine, which allows a slider to vary the power input for a different heat generation.

I think based on your ask you should derive something separate. It seems fairly different from anything in the mod and I like to keep the focus fairly narrow. Feel free to use anything you want for reference though, although I know the older code in the plugins is not clean, well commented or anything.

[linuxgurugamer]

8 minutes ago, Nertea said:

I'm not certain that's not intentional but I'll check.

I... don't think anything in the plugins has the capacity to do things like that. The closest thing  would be VariablePowerEngine, which allows a slider to vary the power input for a different heat generation.

I think based on your ask you should derive something separate. It seems fairly different from anything in the mod and I like to keep the focus fairly narrow. Feel free to use anything you want for reference though, although I know the older code in the plugins is not clean, well commented or anything.

Thanks.  I pretty much came to that conclusion a few hours after I posted that message.

One question:  I'm changing the maxThrust in my protomod, but it doesn't seem to change the actual engine thrust.  I can control the throttle without any issue.

I'm doing something a bit similar to what you do:  I get a list of the engine modules, and for each one a list of the propellants,

Then, I increase the maxThrust on the engineModules, and also increase the propellant.ratio.  I don't know about if the propellant change is being done, but the max thrust is not affecting the engine thrust as reported in the PAW.

Any ideas?

[Nertea]

22 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Thanks.  I pretty much came to that conclusion a few hours after I posted that message.

One question:  I'm changing the maxThrust in my protomod, but it doesn't seem to change the actual engine thrust.  I can control the throttle without any issue.

I'm doing something a bit similar to what you do:  I get a list of the engine modules, and for each one a list of the propellants,

Then, I increase the maxThrust on the engineModules, and also increase the propellant.ratio.  I don't know about if the propellant change is being done, but the max thrust is not affecting the engine thrust as reported in the PAW.

Any ideas?

Check out what's going on here. It's not enough to purely change the max thrust if you're messing with the ratios - you need to use the propellant ratios to derive the flow rate you want. If you just change the maxThrust, nothing will change as it's not changing the actual fuel flow rate. You need to modify the appropriate ratios to get the fuel mix you desire, apply them, then calculate the maxFuelFlow, apply that, then modify the max thrust. This is kinda from memory but the code in that snippet looks like it agrees.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Nertea

[linuxgurugamer]

4 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Check out what's going on here. It's not enough to purely change the max thrust if you're messing with the ratios - you need to use the propellant ratios to derive the flow rate you want. If you just change the maxThrust, nothing will change as it's not changing the actual fuel flow rate. You need to modify the appropriate ratios to get the fuel mix you desire, apply them, then calculate the maxFuelFlow, apply that, then modify the max thrust. This is kinda from memory but the code in that snippet looks like it agrees.

Ah, got it.  I was hoping to follow the KISS principle.

Thank you

[Nertea]

Just now, linuxgurugamer said:

Ah, got it.  I was hoping to follow the KISS principle.

Thank you

A noble goal, but I would point out that it almost never works when messing with KSP's module internals :P. 

 

[jpinard]

I am adding some extra solar systems to my game (I've been away from the game a long time) and was looking at add some propulsion that would fit this nicely but not be too overpowered as I'd like it to be balanced well (it should still take a long time to get way out there, and preferably it would not be a good option for inside the solar system - though that may not be possible).  Which of the amazing mods here should I take to fullfill this?

Thanks for such great work @Nertea !

[Streetwind]

5 minutes ago, jpinard said:

Which of the amazing mods here should I take to fullfill this?

The electric engines in NF Propulsion will offer you oodles of dV, if you can stomach the long burn times. (BetterTimeWarp can help you with 10x physical timewarp options.) Reaching solar escape and shortening the trip through the void is easily possible with those.

You can power them with solar, particularly the blanket arrays of NF Solar, but if you're looking to field the biggest toys, then you won't be able to get around NF Electrical and its reactors.

Alternatively, you could look at Kerbal Atomics - another of Nertea's mods, though it has a forum thread of its own. That mod has fancy nuclear engines. They don't quite have the sheer dV potential of the electric engines, but they do have more thrust.

[NiL]

I have a NFS issue - some solar panels (Starship panels as an exapmle) is not folded properly - solar panel is clipping out of the housing. It does not affect physics at all, but looks kinda ugly. I will add images later, if neeeded. IDK, maybe it should be like this?

[NiL]

Also what about "NFS legacy pack" with all the old panels, but retextured as new and shiny? I know that they are "not realistic", "impossible" and all that, but at the same time they are pretty cool.

[cineboxandrew]

20 minutes ago, NiL said:

I have a NFS issue - some solar panels (Starship panels as an exapmle) is not folded properly - solar panel is clipping out of the housing. It does not affect physics at all, but looks kinda ugly. I will add images later, if neeeded. IDK, maybe it should be like this?

does deploying and retracting the panel fix it?

[Nertea]

9 hours ago, NiL said:

Also what about "NFS legacy pack" with all the old panels, but retextured as new and shiny? I know that they are "not realistic", "impossible" and all that, but at the same time they are pretty cool.

The redo started out there, but it rapidly became apparent that to hit the quality targets new UVs would be needed and many animations would need to be redone. That's most of the work vs starting from scratch, so I started from scratch.

Honestly there are very few panels that aren't "the same but better" in the new version, I'm curious which ones you're talking about.

9 hours ago, NiL said:

I have a NFS issue - some solar panels (Starship panels as an exapmle) is not folded properly - solar panel is clipping out of the housing. It does not affect physics at all, but looks kinda ugly. I will add images later, if neeeded. IDK, maybe it should be like this?

Had no reports of this before. Definitely need a list of the affected panels plus some screenshots. Likely to need logs as well.

20 hours ago, jpinard said:

I am adding some extra solar systems to my game (I've been away from the game a long time) and was looking at add some propulsion that would fit this nicely but not be too overpowered as I'd like it to be balanced well (it should still take a long time to get way out there, and preferably it would not be a good option for inside the solar system - though that may not be possible).  Which of the amazing mods here should I take to fullfill this?

Thanks for such great work @Nertea !

I would say that thanks to the work we put in (mostly @Streetwind) there are not many things in the suite that are actually overpowered. They give more possibilities, with interesting new design tradeoffs. The only things that I think are objectively better are some of the engines in NFLV... but honestly only by a few s of ISP.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Nertea

[jpinard]

Cool -thanks Nertea!

Edited June 24, 2019 by jpinard

[jpinard]

2 hours ago, jpinard said:

Cool -thanks Nertea!

Does the same hold true for your Kerbal Atomics expansion?  I see it's "recommended" when I add your Near future stuff.

Thanks!

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, jpinard said:

Does the same hold true for your Kerbal Atomics expansion?  I see it's "recommended" when I add your Near future stuff.

Thanks!

More or less. It hasn't had as much work done on it, but I'm fairly confident that any raw numeric improvements in part performance are countered by the need to design around boiloff. 

 

[jpinard]

IN one of my build's I'm running Real Solar System and Realism Overhaul.  With that in mind do I want your NFS LFO Engines mod in addition to all your others?  Or does that mess something up with the realism of liquid engines already included?

[spacegeek37]

Quick question: can you activate the engine pods on the "Nereid" and "Tethys" command pods, and if so, how?

[TBenz]

3 hours ago, spacegeek37 said:

Quick question: can you activate the engine pods on the "Nereid" and "Tethys" command pods, and if so, how?

Neither actually have engines built into the pods. Instead, both have empty engine mountings designed to house specific engines, the Chickadee and Hummingbird engines respectively. Both can be found in the propulsion systems tech tree node.

[Streetwind]

18 hours ago, jpinard said:

IN one of my build's I'm running Real Solar System and Realism Overhaul.  With that in mind do I want your NFS LFO Engines mod in addition to all your others?  Or does that mess something up with the realism of liquid engines already included?

None of the parts in Nertea's mods are intended to be fully realistic recreations. That said, some are heavily enough inspired to come, perhaps, within 95% of being faithful renditions of the real thing. You're playing Realism Overhaul, so you presumably have an interest in your parts being realistic as well; you'll have to decide for yourself how much stock you put in that.

Stat-wise, the parts are incompatible out of the box. They work, sure, but they are balanced for stock KSP, not something scaled 11 times larger. Isp will be wrong, mass and thrust will be wrong, fuels used will be wrong, pricing will not match comparable parts, and so on and so forth. Nertea's mods do not ship patches to make them fit into Realism Overhaul.

However, perhaps Realism Ovehaul does ship patches to tweak Nertea's parts? I don't know, I've never used it. But I do know that it does support a great many modded parts.

 

TL;DR: Unsupported configuration, you're on your own - unless RO offers the support you need.

[jpinard]

52 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

None of the parts in Nertea's mods are intended to be fully realistic recreations. That said, some are heavily enough inspired to come, perhaps, within 95% of being faithful renditions of the real thing. You're playing Realism Overhaul, so you presumably have an interest in your parts being realistic as well; you'll have to decide for yourself how much stock you put in that.

Stat-wise, the parts are incompatible out of the box. They work, sure, but they are balanced for stock KSP, not something scaled 11 times larger. Isp will be wrong, mass and thrust will be wrong, fuels used will be wrong, pricing will not match comparable parts, and so on and so forth. Nertea's mods do not ship patches to make them fit into Realism Overhaul.

However, perhaps Realism Ovehaul does ship patches to tweak Nertea's parts? I don't know, I've never used it. But I do know that it does support a great many modded parts.

 

TL;DR: Unsupported configuration, you're on your own - unless RO offers the support you need.

Awesome - thanks for that rundown!

[NiL]

On 6/24/2019 at 9:41 AM, cineboxandrew said:

does deploying and retracting the panel fix it?

No, neither in VAB or in flight. 

On 6/24/2019 at 6:35 PM, Nertea said:

The redo started out there, but it rapidly became apparent that to hit the quality targets new UVs would be needed and many animations would need to be redone. That's most of the work vs starting from scratch, so I started from scratch.

Honestly there are very few panels that aren't "the same but better" in the new version, I'm curious which ones you're talking about.

Well, for example OKEB-75 panel was flat and fitted good to many rockets, now it's shroud is very extruded and OKEB-500 looked so nice being like a giant monolithic field of solar panels (but now it's much more flat while folded, which is nice), but it's just a matter of habit for me, i guess. And i just cannot express how i miss the old very short curved panel (which name i cannot remember, ironic) and Tweakscale support for curved panels in general. Of course they were very thick and kinda ugly for that matter, but i used them for all my spaceplanes back in the days and the very short one was really useful for powering literally everything that needs a medium amount of EC. Other than that all the new panels looks amazing - now i am just addicted to using the Orion one for every single vacuum craft.

 

On 6/24/2019 at 6:35 PM, Nertea said:

Had no reports of this before. Definitely need a list of the affected panels plus some screenshots. Likely to need logs as well.

Just three parts which must be having a different animation mechanic or so: OKEB-150R, OKEB-25R, OKEB-75R. The OKEB-150R behaved like that in the old versions of NFS too, but i thought it maybe meant to be like that (and with other two solar panels glitched up like that after the update i am now sure thet it isn't intended to). For taking screenshots i used a fresh KSP install without DLCs and with only NFS installed from CKAN, but that glitch is still there both with manual installing in an empty Gamedata or full modded install with both DLCs (so it's not a mod conflict clearly).

I use no -forceDX11 or -forceopengl stuff, but in case - when i tried -DX11 (some time ago, reinstalled KSP a couple times since then, so unrelated directly), there were a texture glitches (some turned pitch black), maybe it matters. Specs - Win8.1, 4 gb of RAM (potato computer, yeah), Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, drivers and DirectX is up-to-date (idk maybe it matters). 

P.S. When folded, that leaning parts are blinking like clipped parts, idk khow to say it more clear.