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

[Stevphfeniey]

>nfex released

[Emperor of Ilve]

I know that you lost the source files for NF Aero but is there any chance that it comes back for 1.8 or 1.9

[klgraham1013]

On 1/7/2020 at 12:20 PM, Emperor of Ilve said:

I know that you lost the source files for NF Aero but is there any chance that it comes back for 1.8 or 1.9

The 2.5m jet engines were quite welcome.  The Goliath is to "model kit part" for my liking.  It also doesn't hurt that everything Nertea does is gorgeous.

Edited January 10, 2020 by klgraham1013

[biohazard15]

7 hours ago, Nertea said:

Nope, sorry. See post:

Sad.

Any chance of you reconsidering and providing a DLL that is recompiled for 1.7.3? NFeX would be really useful for exploring outer worlds in OPM, JNSQ and such, but Kopernicus is still at 1.7.3, and there is no ETA on update.

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, Emperor of Ilve said:

I know that you lost the source files for NF Aero but is there any chance that it comes back for 1.8 or 1.9

They are still 100% fine if you update the dependencies. 

1 hour ago, biohazard15 said:

Sad.

Any chance of you reconsidering and providing a DLL that is recompiled for 1.7.3? NFeX would be really useful for exploring outer worlds in OPM, JNSQ and such, but Kopernicus is still at 1.7.3, and there is no ETA on update.

If I do I would not provide any real support for that branch.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Nertea

[Nertea]

NFX 1.0.1

• Reduced mass of Micro CMG to 0.01 from 0.05t
• Fixed base range of both dedicated feeder antennae being far too high
• Fixed a number of antennae and all reflectors having physics disabled
• Fixed a piston animation issue on the RA-X1 relay antenna
• Fixed an issue where reflector buffs would not be removed when a reflector was retracted.
• Fixed some UI oddities with reflectors PAW fields
• Fixed reflectors not augmenting antennae when unfocused

[Galland1998]

Do the new antennas in the exploration mod work with RemoteTech?

[DrKartoffelsalat]

No, they don't. I temporarily switched to CommNet Constellation to try NFX out.

[Galland1998]

Thanks

 

[stefsilver]

what's this part from  

[biohazard15]

10 hours ago, Nertea said:

If I do I would not provide any real support for that branch.

That is absolutely understandable. Post it as "unsupported experimental build"

For now, I just deleted the DLL, all reflector antennas and reflector MM patches. Seems to work fine.

[RyGuy_McFly]

(Extremely minor nitpick, but the thread OP has a rather hilarious Y2K-esque typo in the release date of NFX )

Also, is there any chance of a 1.7.x release of NFX? These antennae seem perfect for OPM, etc., and a Kopernicus update may be farther out then we think.

EDIT: Learned how to read.

Edited January 8, 2020 by RyGuy_McFly

[eberkain]

new antennas will need a patch to play nice with kerbalism so I just pulled them out for now, new mod looks amazing, such great work.  

[Gryphorim]

If and when NF Aero gets a remake, Is there any hope of getting some Mk2 fuselage profile parts?

OPT used to have (and probably still does) a Mk2 engine with a "Millenium Falcon" style linear exhaust, that I tweak to a more realistic, or at least more in line with NF stats, SABRE style engine.

I'd love a Mk2 Linear aerospike / SABRE multimode engine in NF style.

 

Total pipedream here, but if NF Aero ever did get a remake, my personal wish would be a standardisation with OPT fuselage form factors, so that there are a complete set of NF Aero parts that are fully interchangeable and stackable with OPT aero parts. I just feel that OPT got the fuselage shapes down just right, but NF Aero made the top tier engines. 

[DeadJohn]

1 hour ago, Gryphorim said:

If and when NF Aero gets a remake, Is there any hope of getting some Mk2 fuselage profile parts?

OPT used to have (and probably still does) a Mk2 engine with a "Millenium Falcon" style linear exhaust, that I tweak to a more realistic, or at least more in line with NF stats, SABRE style engine.

I'd love a Mk2 Linear aerospike / SABRE multimode engine in NF style.

Take a look at Mk2 Expansion. It has dual-mode engines, linear aerospike, and more. The engine balance is similar to Near Future: better than stock but not as superpowered as OPT.

 

[klgraham1013]

22 hours ago, Nertea said:

They are still 100% fine if you update the dependencies.

I feel silly for not just trying this.  Thought there was more to it with the Unity update.

[Nertea]

9 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

I feel silly for not just trying this.  Thought there was more to it with the Unity update.

NFAero doesn't have any plugin components (it relies on @Angel-125 to provide that) so it'll be fine for quite a while. The only part-related 1.8 issue was the deprecation of a specific texture compression format, which imo anyone in their right mind shouldn't have been using in the first place. 

6 hours ago, Gryphorim said:

If and when NF Aero gets a remake, Is there any hope of getting some Mk2 fuselage profile parts?

OPT used to have (and probably still does) a Mk2 engine with a "Millenium Falcon" style linear exhaust, that I tweak to a more realistic, or at least more in line with NF stats, SABRE style engine.

I'd love a Mk2 Linear aerospike / SABRE multimode engine in NF style.

 

Total pipedream here, but if NF Aero ever did get a remake, my personal wish would be a standardisation with OPT fuselage form factors, so that there are a complete set of NF Aero parts that are fully interchangeable and stackable with OPT aero parts. I just feel that OPT got the fuselage shapes down just right, but NF Aero made the top tier engines. 

I won't remake the mod - I still have the assets, they just need to be rebuilt in Unity (haha, 'just', that's still a lot of work).

The problem with making parts in the specific fuselage shapes is that they then become less useful overall (this goes double for OPT-shapes). You can put a 1.25m engine on a Mk2 part, but you can't really put a Mk2 engine on a 1.25m part, if you know what I mean...

@biohazard15, @RyGuy_McFly Did 1 or 2 ingame tests and *seems* fine.

https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/NearFutureExploration/tree/1-7-3

[TonedMite133805]

Maybe have switchable meshes for 1.25m vs Mk2, etc.?

[klgraham1013]

Having mk2 to size1 adapters has always been fine for me.  There's several mods with additional variations of these as well.

[Nertea]

I mean, I did just release something new, but I've already started on the first 2020 project - 

Updates to NFLV!

This pack has been aging poorly for a while so there are going to be some significant additions and improvements in the next generation:

• 5m
  • Ground-up overhaul of the tanks
  • New and expanded set of 5m engine adapters
  • Repaint of the cargo parts (don't think they need a remodel)
  • Tweaks and improvements to the utility parts
• 7.5m
  • Ground-up overhaul of the tanks (plus an additional length of tank)
  • Revised set of engine adapters
  • Actual XL cargo parts

These new tanks are being developed in lockstep with the Restock 5m tank set so will with some MM magic integrate perfectly with those. 

I'm also going to be adding some more engines. I have a patch that I play with that turns the stock engines that 'should' be cryogenic to be cryogenic - that means you lose the Vector, Mammoth, Rhino and Skipper as options for LFO engines. I plan on adding some new engines to fill those niches that are purely LFO. These are going to be based mostly on fairly robust engine concepts from recent history that never quite made it off the ground. I'll be making:

The AR-1, Aerojet's repeatedly-advertised engine that nobody really wants. This AR-1 will be 1.25m (though a little chonky on one side) and will more or less fill the Vector role:

Available in all the usual variants of course. The big blobbly turbo causes an interesting asymmetry to the boattail. 

The AR-1 clusters very nicely to build the Mammoth replacement too, which has Lots Of Pipes:

 

To replace the Skipper, I've chosen the RS-84, an engine designed as part of the Space Launch Initiative: 

Cooked up some nice variants ranging from compact to 2.5m.

These models are more or less done - there's 1 or 2 more engines on the way (Rhino still needs a replacement which is in the final detail stages, and I need some kind of 3.75m LFO vac thing), but I think these will all be very fun to play with and hopefully look nice too.

ETA on this is probably early Q2, it's quite a lot of work. I'll post periodic progress here. 

 

[Okhin]

Woot moar cryo \o/

Also, I love what you did in NFT Exploration. There's a lot of neat antennas, and the reflector mechanics enables interesting spaceship designs, thanks

[biohazard15]

7 hours ago, Nertea said:

Did 1 or 2 ingame tests and *seems* fine.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

Seems to work for me, reflectors are doing what they're supposed to do (had a short "what the heck" moment first, until I realized that you have to point antenna at the dish itself, not just at the part )

Question: from what I get, "can't handle variants" means the plugin does not support MMing feed module to antennas which, err, "direction" moves with deployment (thus, no support for HG-55, but works fine with 88-88). Am I right?

[biohazard15]

A MM patch for some BDB antennas:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sVZkk1cDl0d3okMhuxQ47oWe1xOS3X21/view?usp=sharing

[Eriksonn]

I recently got the NFT Exploration mod (so now i have almost the complete collection), and Everything in there is really cool, i like the tiny landing legs and the variaties of probecores and all of the small relay antennas and the reflectors seem like a neat concept.

There is however one slight issue that i find with the new antennas: none of them are even close to competing with pretty much any stock antenna intended for interplanetary distances like the communotron 88-88, as i made a small probe with 8 ph3s, one RA-0-8 and a FR8 paired With a RFL-3 Array, and i didnt even get out do dres orbit Before my signal faded, and then my until then disabled 88-88 overpowered all of them massivly even though it was much smaller than the RA-0-8.

So while these antennas seem great for in-system relays to rovers and probes and such, they are not good for interplanetary things, and as if i recall correctly, a relay only considers an antenna valid if it has enough range to reach kerbin on its own, even if there are other antennas on the same craft, so that means that most(not sure how many, but looking at the stats i belive most of them unfortunatly) of these new fancy antennas will be pretty much useless outside of kerbin soi.

[Nertea]

16 hours ago, biohazard15 said:

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

Seems to work for me, reflectors are doing what they're supposed to do (had a short "what the heck" moment first, until I realized that you have to point antenna at the dish itself, not just at the part )

Question: from what I get, "can't handle variants" means the plugin does not support MMing feed module to antennas which, err, "direction" moves with deployment (thus, no support for HG-55, but works fine with 88-88). Am I right?

There's no issue with that really - you would just make the origin point the deployed location. The no variants thing is related to Restock, which I want to always support (because I never have it not installed), having antennas that have PartVariants that actually point in different directions depending on variant selected. 

1 hour ago, Eriksonn said:

I recently got the NFT Exploration mod (so now i have almost the complete collection), and Everything in there is really cool, i like the tiny landing legs and the variaties of probecores and all of the small relay antennas and the reflectors seem like a neat concept.

There is however one slight issue that i find with the new antennas: none of them are even close to competing with pretty much any stock antenna intended for interplanetary distances like the communotron 88-88, as i made a small probe with 8 ph3s, one RA-0-8 and a FR8 paired With a RFL-3 Array, and i didnt even get out do dres orbit Before my signal faded, and then my until then disabled 88-88 overpowered all of them massivly even though it was much smaller than the RA-0-8.

So while these antennas seem great for in-system relays to rovers and probes and such, they are not good for interplanetary things, and as if i recall correctly, a relay only considers an antenna valid if it has enough range to reach kerbin on its own, even if there are other antennas on the same craft, so that means that most(not sure how many, but looking at the stats i belive most of them unfortunatly) of these new fancy antennas will be pretty much useless outside of kerbin soi.

Eh the stock antennas are very, very strong in a lot of cases. It's worth pointing out that uh, size isn't everything in RF-land.

Still, more explanation - I could keep making antennas that get stronger than stock, but that might be a bit pointless. Check out this chart:

NFEx in blue, Stock in orange. Reflectors are included. 

Basically, stock's progression is quite hole-y at the lower end, but less so at the top. So most of the NFX antennas were designed to fit into areas that could be useful and not outclass everything. 

I also know this is less relevant in many gameplay modes too, but most of the NFX antennae have interesting properties in terms of data rate, power consumption, combinability, etc.