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

[CDSlice]

40 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

10 hours ago, CDSlice said:

 

I've got the whole collection installed, but as I've said, they're usually the foldable paper-thin types. I was thinking of a dish that would be the Kerbal analogue to New Mexico's Very Large Array. Also, an impact tolerance comparable to girders and struts.

Well, the foldable ones are what we’d probably use for spaceships in the future for giant antennas since it is simply much easier to launch them into space and are probably lighter. I also kind of doubt that Nertea is interested in modeling a giant antenna dish for FFT since he already has antennas for that niche. However depending on what you want to do you might get OK results tweakscaling the largest (re)stock relay dish for your ships or using Kerbal Konstructs to place additional DSN towers on Kerbin or (maybe) other planets and moons.

[intelliCom]

1 hour ago, CDSlice said:

Well, the foldable ones are what we’d probably use for spaceships in the future for giant antennas since it is simply much easier to launch them into space and are probably lighter. I also kind of doubt that Nertea is interested in modeling a giant antenna dish for FFT since he already has antennas for that niche. However depending on what you want to do you might get OK results tweakscaling the largest (re)stock relay dish for your ships or using Kerbal Konstructs to place additional DSN towers on Kerbin or (maybe) other planets and moons.

Maybe, but a tweakscaled relay dish just doesn't have that kind of detail. A dish that heavy needs a lot of structural stability.

[Nertea]

5 hours ago, intelliCom said:

I was thinking of more of a list that also contains all the ISPs and thrust values, a sort of "NFWiki" if you will. If the galleries are up to date and contain every thruster though, I can use that to mark off each one, then post a PDF back into this thread as a complete documentation for other players.

Because those change with balance, I don't really want to maintain that... it's quite a pain to maintain the mods I do to a high quality and adding more steps to an update is a bit frustrating! I have internal spreadsheets and it's hard enough ensuring i propagate all updates correctly. 

5 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Speaking of those galleries, what's the mod you use for KSP's graphics?

Can never really remember, but these days it's scatterer, TUFX and sometimes something like AVP or whatever seems cool at the time to improve the planet textures. 

 

5 hours ago, intelliCom said:

I've got the whole collection installed, but as I've said, they're usually the foldable paper-thin types. I was thinking of a dish that would be the Kerbal analogue to New Mexico's Very Large Array. Also, an impact tolerance comparable to girders and struts.

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

I have considered beefier dishes, but they would have to fold. folding that kinda thing is, well... I don't want to think about that. 

[intelliCom]

2 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Because those change with balance, I don't really want to maintain that... it's quite a pain to maintain the mods I do to a high quality and adding more steps to an update is a bit frustrating! I have internal spreadsheets and it's hard enough ensuring i propagate all updates correctly. 

Can never really remember, but these days it's scatterer, TUFX and sometimes something like AVP or whatever seems cool at the time to improve the planet textures. 

 

I have considered beefier dishes, but they would have to fold. folding that kinda thing is, well... I don't want to think about that. 

I can understand that a beefier dish would need to be folded to even fit it into at least a 7.5 meter faring, but that's assuming it has to be sent up as one consecutive piece. You could divide it into 8 "pie slices" which dock to a central piece, or are connected via EVA construction.

A lot of large dishes seem to be divided into smaller sections anyways, like so:
https://imgur.com/a/QIXMoYg

Perhaps the core piece could act as a decent strong antenna on it's own, but each newly docked section boosts the strength like a reflector?

[SpaceFace545]

So not sure why but none of the NFLV engines have sounds. Anyone else have the same issue?

[flart]

nfex-antenna-deploy-wv3-1.cfg has two  ModuleCargoPart
 

Spoiler

  {
    name = ModuleCargoPart
    packedVolume = 16
    stackableQuantity = 2
  }
  MODULE
  {
    name = ModuleCargoPart
    packedVolume = 60
  }

 

 

[AmateurAstronaut1969]

Hi 

I’m just Wondering If you are planning to have The NFS support RPM, MAS and ASET

I saw a Few WIP pictures With them, but can’t find anything else on them

thanks

[1969DavidBowie]

Hey, I'm pretty new to downloading mods, and I have a question about how to download the Near Future Solar mod. I'm doing my download off of Courseforge and the instructions given were to "move the included GameData folder inside your Kerbal Space Program folder". What exactly is meant by moving the GameData folder inside the Kerbal Space Program folder? I know this is a silly and dumb question, and I'll understand if it doesn't get an answer.

Edited February 9, 2021 by 1969DavidBowie
Minor typo

[Tacombel]

@1969DavidBowie Unzip the contents of the zip to end up having this

[lemon cup]

6 hours ago, 1969DavidBowie said:

Hey, I'm pretty new to downloading mods, and I have a question about how to download the Near Future Solar mod. I'm doing my download off of Courseforge and the instructions given were to "move the included GameData folder inside your Kerbal Space Program folder". What exactly is meant by moving the GameData folder inside the Kerbal Space Program folder? I know this is a silly and dumb question, and I'll understand if it doesn't get an answer.

Use your file browser to find where KSP is located in your computer. For example, if you downloaded KSP from Steam on Windows 10, Steam places your games in a folder that it creates inside your “Program Files (x86)” folder.

Navigate through until you find the folder titled “Kerbal Space Program.” According to this mod’s install instructions, after downloading the mod and unzipping it (most operating systems like Windows 10 and MacOS automatically do this), you will find a folder titled “GameData.” Copy this folder and then place it in your “Kerbal Space Program” folder.

The other method (and preferred in some cases) is to go one level deeper. Meaning you will double click the mod’s “GameData” folder to open it, and copy all of the contents inside. Then go to your KSP’s GameData folder and paste the contents directly there.

The results are the same, but sometimes (rarely) doing it the former way results in a mod potentially overwriting files from another mod. 

Hopefully that helps, if not more questions are always welcome.

[1969DavidBowie]

Thanks, I got it working now!

Edited February 9, 2021 by 1969DavidBowie
typo

[intelliCom]

Hey @Nertea, I did some experiments with the Magnetoplasmadynamic RCS blocks, both the LH2 and Lithium variants.
I believe the listed specific impulse for the LH2 thrusters is incorrect. It's listed as 2000 just like the lithium thrusters, but they seem much more inefficient in practice.

Considering cryogenic thrusters are usually less efficient in NF than lithium ones, it's likely that the mistake is in the description rather than practice.
I used these two ships for comparison, which also contains a text document detailing the information I gathered: https://mega.nz/folder/bjY2FTTR#WfNJkFnY4B6f4Fj8MMb-gw

Also, while I'm here, do I have your permission to make a PDF with all the NF parts and their information, if none of them are errors, of course?

Edited February 10, 2021 by intelliCom

[R33]

Hi, I am modding  ksp 1.8.1 , can I use the newest version of these mods or its better to download old 1.8 versions? Thank you.

[justcausebr0]

Can someone help me out with an odd problem? I have a host of mods installed, including almost all of Near Future Technologies. Near Future constructions is creating an odd problem when launching vehicles using the 7.5 m parts where the spacecraft will not move untill all 7.5 m parts are decoupled. It seems to only happen with "EA-AD-SKL Adapter" part, any suggestions other than not using that part?

Edited February 12, 2021 by justcausebr0

[Nertea]

On 2/12/2021 at 12:25 PM, justcausebr0 said:

Can someone help me out with an odd problem? I have a host of mods installed, including almost all of Near Future Technologies. Near Future constructions is creating an odd problem when launching vehicles using the 7.5 m parts where the spacecraft will not move untill all 7.5 m parts are decoupled. It seems to only happen with "EA-AD-SKL Adapter" part, any suggestions other than not using that part?

Hmm, haven't seen that. What variant of that adapter is being used? 

On 2/10/2021 at 3:01 AM, intelliCom said:

Hey @Nertea, I did some experiments with the Magnetoplasmadynamic RCS blocks, both the LH2 and Lithium variants.
I believe the listed specific impulse for the LH2 thrusters is incorrect. It's listed as 2000 just like the lithium thrusters, but they seem much more inefficient in practice.

Considering cryogenic thrusters are usually less efficient in NF than lithium ones, it's likely that the mistake is in the description rather than practice.
I used these two ships for comparison, which also contains a text document detailing the information I gathered: https://mega.nz/folder/bjY2FTTR#WfNJkFnY4B6f4Fj8MMb-gw

Also, while I'm here, do I have your permission to make a PDF with all the NF parts and their information, if none of them are errors, of course?

Mmm, well this is all internal to the game and not my mod . Important to note that LH2 is far less dense, so if you're comparing units/second, the LH2 versions will seem to be using far more... units. But mass flow is the same.

You can make whatever pdfs you like, but I will generally warn that things might change without... warning.

On 2/8/2021 at 3:37 AM, Ollz said:

Hi 

I’m just Wondering If you are planning to have The NFS support RPM, MAS and ASET

I saw a Few WIP pictures With them, but can’t find anything else on them

thanks

No I am not. 

On 2/5/2021 at 10:38 PM, intelliCom said:

I can understand that a beefier dish would need to be folded to even fit it into at least a 7.5 meter faring, but that's assuming it has to be sent up as one consecutive piece. You could divide it into 8 "pie slices" which dock to a central piece, or are connected via EVA construction.

A lot of large dishes seem to be divided into smaller sections anyways, like so:
https://imgur.com/a/QIXMoYg

Perhaps the core piece could act as a decent strong antenna on it's own, but each newly docked section boosts the strength like a reflector?

I think this gets into a method of extraplanetary construction that I don't really want to get into, unfortunately - sorry. 

[intelliCom]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

Mmm, well this is all internal to the game and not my mod . Important to note that LH2 is far less dense, so if you're comparing units/second, the LH2 versions will seem to be using far more... units. But mass flow is the same.

That still seems like LH2 was less efficient, despite listed ISP. I guess it's working normally if it isn't a problem?

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

You can make whatever pdfs you like, but I will generally warn that things might change without... warning.

I guess this calls for the use of changelogs, I suppose. At the very least, I could perhaps make a separate post on the Add-ons forum with a PDF for this mod, and if someone says a value is incorrect, I'll replace the PDF. Problem solved, I just want a comprehensive list of parts like the KSP wiki has, and I'm sure other people would want it too.

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

I think this gets into a method of extraplanetary construction that I don't really want to get into, unfortunately - sorry. 

I'm not sure if it would be that hard to implement, but I suppose it might be out of place with other parts. Bit of a shame how there's reflectors going up to 5T but not an antenna going up that high.

[Nertea]

11 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

That still seems like LH2 was less efficient, despite listed ISP. I guess it's working normally if it isn't a problem?

Maybe I don't understand your test case then. What I saw was you showing many more fuel units used per second with LH2 than Li, which is expected because LH2 units have less mass per unit. Efficiency is mass exhausted per thrust produced, so that is expected and consistent. Can you describe what I'm missing?

13 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

I'm not sure if it would be that hard to implement, but I suppose it might be out of place with other parts. Bit of a shame how there's reflectors going up to 5T but not an antenna going up that high

Oh it's not hard. It's just software development and texture/art stuff. Neither of those are free though, they all cost time and motivation points, and I just don't think it's super interesting at the moment.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

20 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

I'm not sure if it would be that hard to implement, but I suppose it might be out of place with other parts. Bit of a shame how there's reflectors going up to 5T but not an antenna going up that high.

Antennae are relatively simple to make, and the configs are easy to change. 

It could be a nice, easy start to modding 

[intelliCom]

19 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Maybe I don't understand your test case then. What I saw was you showing many more fuel units used per second with LH2 than Li, which is expected because LH2 units have less mass per unit. Efficiency is mass exhausted per thrust produced, so that is expected and consistent. Can you describe what I'm missing?

The delta V of my LH2-propelled craft is way less than the Li-propelled one, despite using as consistent a fuel tank as possible. Only 1000 units difference, yet almost 3000 delta V difference. The difference in delta-V, despite the craft being almost the same, makes me think the thruster blocks have different efficiency. Are the LH2 ones intended to have the same efficiency as Li? If so, I suppose the issue with my ship is that there's a bunch of factors I'm forgetting to take into consideration. What would be the main influence on the Delta V difference?

19 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Oh it's not hard. It's just software development and texture/art stuff. Neither of those are free though, they all cost time and motivation points, and I just don't think it's super interesting at the moment.

Fair enough. Although, that brings up the question on if you're ever thinking of making anything else in the future.

12 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Antennae are relatively simple to make, and the configs are easy to change. 

It could be a nice, easy start to modding 

Maybe, but it would need a suitable 3D model. For something that outputs 5T, it would be a big model and (sorta) complex folding animation. Not saying I can't do it, or that it's too much, but I'm relatively new at 3d modelling.

Edited February 16, 2021 by intelliCom

[Nertea]

6 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

The delta V of my LH2-propelled craft is way less than the Li-propelled one, despite using as consistent a fuel tank as possible. Only 1000 units difference, yet almost 3000 delta V difference. The difference in delta-V, despite the craft being almost the same, makes me think the thruster blocks have different efficiency. Are the LH2 ones intended to have the same efficiency as Li? If so, I suppose the issue with my ship is that there's a bunch of factors I'm forgetting to take into consideration. What would be the main influence on the Delta V difference?

Look at fuel mass, not fuel units. LH2 takes up tons more volume. If you are comparing the same size of fuel tank for both fuels, you will certainly have less DV with the LH2 setup. If you instead look at the total mass of your craft and make that equal in both cases by adding more fuel tanks, you will see the same (more or less) DV.

6 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

Fair enough. Although, that brings up the question on if you're ever thinking of making anything else in the future.

I do have a WIP thread with ongoing work and a roadmap linked in my signature.

 

 

 

 

 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

9 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

folding animation

I was thinking a static antenna since they're easier, but maybe you should look at this:

you could adjust the configs pretty easily. Sizewise, it could definitely fit some of the big reflectors if you need to justify some "realism"

[intelliCom]

11 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

I was thinking a static antenna since they're easier, but maybe you should look at this:

you could adjust the configs pretty easily. Sizewise, it could definitely fit some of the big reflectors if you need to justify some "realism"

When I say "foldable," it doesn't necessarily mean that the antenna is made out of a translucent, flat, fabric-esque material.  Was thinking of something more solid like the very large array, but foldable in pie-slices that stack on one another in compressed form. To send up a static dish antenna that big is ludicrous, unless I break realism a little bit and scale it down into something smaller. Again, I feel like the whole "docking system" could be a potential option here.

Edited February 16, 2021 by intelliCom

[intelliCom]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

Look at fuel mass, not fuel units. LH2 takes up tons more volume. If you are comparing the same size of fuel tank for both fuels, you will certainly have less DV with the LH2 setup. If you instead look at the total mass of your craft and make that equal in both cases by adding more fuel tanks, you will see the same (more or less) DV.

Checked back on that, you were right. Each individual unit doesn't match up to the same mass, so if you make them the same mass, the ISP ends up being the same.

This reminds me of something though. Why do we have hydrogen tanks going up to 5.0m widths, and one particular round tank actually goes past 7.5m, but xenon, argon, and lithium tanks are only up to 2.5m? I can only assume the intention is to use cryogenic engines for heavy transports, but all the electrically-charged engines are always much more efficient. Would it be wiser to have hydrogen tanks repurposed into multi-purpose tanks like the much smaller ones that don't go past 1.25m?

With consideration of heavy ships, it's possible to attach 7 Colossus MPD engines to a 7.5m mount, which would need 21000 EC/s. This would need 1 Excalibur + 3 Hermes nuclear reactors. Is there ever a plan to expand all these parts into things far larger?

Also god damn I really do ask a lot of questions at a high rate, don't I?

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, intelliCom said:

This reminds me of something though. Why do we have hydrogen tanks going up to 5.0m widths, and one particular round tank actually goes past 7.5m, but xenon, argon, and lithium tanks are only up to 2.5m? I can only assume the intention is to use cryogenic engines for heavy transports, but all the electrically-charged engines are always much more efficient. Would it be wiser to have hydrogen tanks repurposed into multi-purpose tanks like the much smaller ones that don't go past 1.25m?

With consideration of heavy ships, it's possible to attach 7 Colossus MPD engines to a 7.5m mount, which would need 21000 EC/s. This would need 1 Excalibur + 3 Hermes nuclear reactors. Is there ever a plan to expand all these parts into things far larger?

There's a limited point to building all sizes of tanks for all possible sizes. Hydrogen tanks get big because they need to be big, the current set of EP fuel tanks seem like enough that most people have been happy (and I'm not really inclined to sink time into that, tanks are boring).

[intelliCom]

8 minutes ago, Nertea said:

There's a limited point to building all sizes of tanks for all possible sizes. Hydrogen tanks get big because they need to be big, the current set of EP fuel tanks seem like enough that most people have been happy (and I'm not really inclined to sink time into that, tanks are boring).

That's weird, because it's kind of the opposite case for me. I would have used Hydrogen tanks that size for heavy payload launching purposes, if conventional LFO tanks couldn't be fuel-switched into LH2 tanks. They just end up making the existing gold-foil tanks redundant, and the largest "round-ball" tank just doesn't seem practical for heavy lifting.

At the very least, there's no reason why people shouldn't have the option to go all the way up for every tank, even if they find that it's got an unusable TWR. I can understand the lack of requirement in making xenon engines at 2.5m sizes, because you have engine clustering for that. The same can't be said for fuel tanks, in a way that effectively uses up the space. You end up with cylinders attached around larger cylinders, which don't even end up fitting within a perfect 3.75m or 5m form factor. 

Maybe it's just my own perfectionist and ambitious sides clashing, but it would seem reasonable to have multipurpose tanks going all the way up to at least 5m width. Not even fuel tanks contained within trusses go past 2.5m, with the octo-truss being the largest in-built area. At the least, could the 5m annular truss be a potential option for including alternative fuel types? In the same realm as octo-truss and hexa-truss?