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

[KSPNoob]

Are the Magnetoplasmadynamic engines suppose to have sound because I'm not really hearing anything, and there seems to be an occasional sound pop, nothing severe just curious.

BTW love all the mods.

Side note, for the cockpit controls will that mod interfere with B9 Aerospace that also adds instruments?

Edited March 8, 2017 by KSPNoob

[TheSaint]

2 hours ago, smotheredrun said:

Looking good!  The only thing that my imagination can see coming out of those engines that could possibly be cooler than what is already there would be rainbows and unicorns!  Whatever you have planned must be pretty cool.

Keep it up!

I think we need a patch in the Extras folder for this.

[Wyzard]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

They should be more considered engines using advanced storable propellants. Though to answer your exact question, not really, but some of those new "green" propellants can hit ~285s in proven models, and there are some futuristic fuel concepts that can hit as high as 345s.

Thanks. I think I'll probably patch the engines locally to be a bit lower, maybe around that 285 mark, to avoid being overpowered and to differentiate them more from LF engines. There's convenience and mass savings in being able to use the same fuel for both main engines and RCS, but I think there should be a tradeoff for that.

4 hours ago, Streetwind said:

I mean, we do know of monopropellants that can deliver this performance, but nobody is crazy enough to actually use them.

Hmm… not that it's a monopropellant, but now you have me imagining KSP engines that run on chlorine trifluoride — great I_sp, but can only be transferred by a skilled engineer (like uranium in NFE). Or maybe dioxygen difluoride — needs refrigeration like LH2, otherwise the tank explodes. Could be worth the difficulty if the engines are efficient enough. 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Wyzard

[Raptor9]

7 hours ago, Streetwind said:

I mean, we do know of monopropellants that can deliver this performance, but nobody is crazy enough to actually use them.

...the exception being Kerbals of course; I assume that was implied? 

[Drew Kerman]

42 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

...the exception being Kerbals of course; I assume that was implied? 

that was my same exact thought

[Nertea]

On 3/8/2017 at 9:48 AM, Streetwind said:

Not to discredit the involved artists, but these untextured thingamabobs look better than some of the textured thingamabobs in stock KSP...

A bit of AO and a well constructed model goes a long way towards that. 

On 3/8/2017 at 10:48 AM, KSPNoob said:

Are the Magnetoplasmadynamic engines suppose to have sound because I'm not really hearing anything, and there seems to be an occasional sound pop, nothing severe just curious.

BTW love all the mods.

Side note, for the cockpit controls will that mod interfere with B9 Aerospace that also adds instruments?

A) Yes there's supposed to be sound, but I can't even recall the last time I opened KSP with sound on
B) I doubt it.

20 hours ago, Wyzard said:

Thanks. I think I'll probably patch the engines locally to be a bit lower, maybe around that 285 mark, to avoid being overpowered and to differentiate them more from LF engines. There's convenience and mass savings in being able to use the same fuel for both main engines and RCS, but I think there should be a tradeoff for that.

Hmm… not that it's a monopropellant, but now you have me imagining KSP engines that run on chlorine trifluoride — great I_sp, but can only be transferred by a skilled engineer (like uranium in NFE). Or maybe dioxygen difluoride — needs refrigeration like LH2, otherwise the tank explodes. Could be worth the difficulty if the engines are efficient enough. 

I'm probably going to knock them down to the low 300s in the balancing update to be honest. 

[Tarheel1999]

27 minutes ago, Nertea said:

I'm probably going to knock them down to the low 300s in the balancing update to be honest. 

When you consider cost (fuel and engine) they already seem pretty balanced. For the designs I've built trying both mono and LFO, LFO is always cheaper and has slightly more DV. Regardless, I usually go with mono anyways for the great models and a change of pace. 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Tarheel1999

[mikegarrison]

11 minutes ago, Tarheel1999 said:

When you consider cost (fuel and engine) they already seem pretty balanced. For the designs I've built trying both mono and LFO, LFO is always cheaper and has slightly more DV. Regardless, I usually go with mono anyways for the great models and a change of pace. 

A few versions of KSP back, I played through a career game where my lander designs almost all featured a big tank of monoprop and 3-4 of Necrobones's SpaceY SuperDrako clone engines. It didn't have the best ISP, but it was a really simple and compact design that didn't take a lot of futzing around to build up in the VAB. ISP isn't everything.

[DStaal]

8 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

A few versions of KSP back, I played through a career game where my lander designs almost all featured a big tank of monoprop and 3-4 of Necrobones's SpaceY SuperDrako clone engines. It didn't have the best ISP, but it was a really simple and compact design that didn't take a lot of futzing around to build up in the VAB. ISP isn't everything.

True, but monoprop's largest real-world advantage in many cases is not needing an ignition source - something which doesn't apply in KSP.  So it gets harder to justify tradeoffs against performance.

[monstah]

8 minutes ago, DStaal said:

True, but monoprop's largest real-world advantage in many cases is not needing an ignition source - something which doesn't apply in KSP.  So it gets harder to justify tradeoffs against performance.

One possible workaround would be for monoprop engines to be noticeably lighter than their LFO counterparts (it could even make sense, considering simpler machinery)

[mikegarrison]

9 minutes ago, DStaal said:

True, but monoprop's largest real-world advantage in many cases is not needing an ignition source - something which doesn't apply in KSP.  So it gets harder to justify tradeoffs against performance.

Well, technically that's hypergolic fuel, not monoprop fuel. Many bi-propellant fuels are hypergolic.

[Nertea]

I finished the diffuse maps for the small VASIMR, on to the next one now.

Also some minor updates for some packs.

NF Electrical 0.8.5

• Changed surface attach mode of Whirlijig to allow surface attachments on some areas of the part
• Fixed USI Patch PDU fuel rate

NF Construction 0.7.6

• Fixed octo-truss and spinal docking connector snap offsets
• Added bottom stack nodes to 1.25m multi-adapters

NF Spacecraft 0.6.3 

• Fixed NFProps not being included… again
• Fixed resource flow modes for new monopropellant engines so that they mimic LFO fuel modes
• Fixed orientation of Mk4-1 IVA windows

 

 

 

[Drew Kerman]

6 hours ago, Nertea said:

A) Yes there's supposed to be sound, but I can't even recall the last time I opened KSP with sound on

same here. Sad Squad can't be bothered or afford to hire an audio engineer. But I digress...

Yay updates!

[FiiZzioN]

So, why am I still getting the update message after downloading from spacedock?

[ThePsion5]

So for some reason the Whirlijig has disappeared from my tech tree after downloading the latest couple of updates to Near Future Electrical (also using Community Tech Tree). The part files are still there and inspecting the .cfg files, everything looks right, but it's disappeared. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Omnipius]

Same here. What is this mysterious 0.8.5?

 

EDIT: One nit - now any vessels with the Whirlijig won't load. 

Edited March 10, 2017 by Omnipius

[Wyzard]

This seems to be the cause of the Whirlijig problem:

[LOG 02:07:17.329] Load(Model): NearFutureElectrical/Parts/Utility/nuclear-recycler-25/nuclear-recycler-25
[ERR 02:07:17.330] File error:
Number overflow.
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) object:__icall_wrapper_mono_array_new_specific (intptr,int)
  at A.^O^E.ReadAnimation (System.IO.BinaryReader br, UnityEngine.GameObject o) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at A.^O^E.ReadChild (System.IO.BinaryReader br, UnityEngine.Transform parent) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at A.^O^E.ReadChild (System.IO.BinaryReader br, UnityEngine.Transform parent) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at A.^O^E.
 (.UrlFile ^A) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

[WRN 02:07:17.330] Model load error in '/home/mike/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Kerbal Space Program/GameData/NearFutureElectrical/Parts/Utility/nuclear-recycler-25/nuclear-recycler-25.mu'

Replacing nuclear-recycler-25.mu with the one from v0.8.4 fixes the problem.  Looks like v0.8.5 includes a new model that's corrupted somehow.

[Supercheese]

Can confirm the Whirligig bug, I've reverted to 0.8.4 which has fixed things for me.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Supercheese

[narvster]

8 hours ago, FiiZzioN said:

So, why am I still getting the update message after downloading from spacedock?

 

3 hours ago, Omnipius said:

Same here. What is this mysterious 0.8.5?

 

EDIT: One nit - now any vessels with the Whirlijig won't load. 

I've had a look at the 0.8.5 issue as it confused me too, it looks like the version URL in the NearfuturePropulsion.version file is incorrect.  if you look at the link below it's version URL is set to point at NearFutureElectrical's URL. 

https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/NearFuturePropulsion/blob/master/GameData/NearFuturePropulsion/Versioning/NearFuturePropulsion.version

It should be a simple fix for @Nertea to do I guess, as an interim fix you can change the text in your local .version file to:

{
    "NAME":"NearFuturePropulsion",
    "URL":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ChrisAdderley/NearFuturePropulsion/master/GameData/NearFuturePropulsion/Versioning/NearFuturePropulsion.version",
    "DOWNLOAD":"http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/155465-near-future-technologies",
    "VERSION":
    {
        "MAJOR":0,
        "MINOR":8,
        "PATCH":4,
        "BUILD":0
    },
    "KSP_VERSION":
    {
        "MAJOR":1,
        "MINOR":2,
        "PATCH":2
    }
}

Ironically, I guess this would change it's version to 0.8.5

 

[FellipeC]

I have no idea why, but my 1.25m monopropelant engine was named orbitalEngine-125.

Looks the correct name is orbital-engine-125

Can somebody confirm?

http://imgur.com/oHL9Uyz

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, FellipeC said:

I have no idea why, but my 1.25m monopropelant engine was named orbitalEngine-125.

Looks the correct name is orbital-engine-125

Can somebody confirm?

http://imgur.com/oHL9Uyz

That was a bug in the first 0.6.0 release, I'm afraid. It was fixed like three days later. That was over a month ago.

However, since the model itself has not changed, you might be able to salvage it by going into your persistent.sfs file, finding the vessel in question, and correcting the name of the engine part. Careful, it's case sensitive.

 

Edited March 10, 2017 by Streetwind

[FellipeC]

2 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

That was a bug in the first 0.6.0 release, I'm afraid. It was fixed only like three days later. That was over a month ago.

However, since the model itself has not changed, you might be able to salvage it by going into your persistent.sfs file, finding the vessel in question, and correcting the name of the engine part. Careful, it's case sensitive.

Thanks. For some reason I only got notice of a new update today. Did what you suggest and worked fine! Thanks a lot.

[Nertea]

Yurk some kind of animation corruption error in that model... I'll address that with a hotfix today. Also the other problem.

[Mikeloeven]

I know it says CKAN is not supported but honestly it needs to be especially since its becoming the standard for mod management these version mismatches are kind of annoying. Not saying I am too lazy for manual installs but rather that the disconnect caused by manually updating can cause some issues

Edited March 10, 2017 by Mikeloeven

[Space Kadet]

i love how many people ask for CKAN but there's some many issues with a new mod and people b***hing about it i can see why people dont want to get involved. Never mind the gits that tell you to do it as if the developer is lazy and not person that wants to spend 10 minutes installing mods!  Rock on @Nertea your mods are awsome!