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

[Wyzard]

1 hour ago, Brainpop14 said:

Any word on whether these all work for 1.12.3 yet?

I haven't noticed any problems, and minor patch updates generally don't break most mods.

[modus]

Yes it works. Also see thread title.

Spoiler

Just try mods in 1.12.3 instead of asking everywhere parts and planetpacks will work (definitely since 1.8) and if a (popular) mod doesn't work someone will have reported it.

 

[Superluminal Gremlin]

Does anybody know how System Heat works for the Engines and Reactors in NFP and NFE respectively. Can i place radiators anywhere on my craft,  or must they be on the specific part i want to cool

 

Thanks

[danfarnsy]

1 hour ago, TKMK said:

Can i place radiators anywhere on my craft,  or must they be on the specific part i want to cool

For System Heat, it doesn't matter. Heat sources and radiators have to be on the same assigned loop, but can be placed anywhere.

[Superluminal Gremlin]

1 hour ago, danfarnsy said:

same assigned loop,

as in the same craft? Im still pretty new to System Heat

[danfarnsy]

22 minutes ago, TKMK said:

as in the same craft? Im still pretty new to System Heat

Yes, parts on the same craft. But a single craft can have more than one heat loop.

Example: If I have a small nuclear reactor providing electricity, it will run at a temperature around 750 K (or something), and it will need a few small radiators to match. So in the VAB, I right click on those parts and make sure they have the same Loop ID. If you don't specify a loop, all parts you add will default to Loop 0. But if you then add a larger nuclear engine from Kerbal Atomics, which runs at a higher temperature, you can set it and larger radiators on a different loop ID running at the engine's higher temperature. Everything on the same loop will come to the same temperature.

[Superluminal Gremlin]

Now thats cool. Thanks for helping clear things up :)

[Dante4]

On ckan all the mods except construction show as valid for current game version. Is construction still valid and just showing weird on there?

Sorry, new to the game and to how modding works, not sure if this is the right place for the question. 

[SciMan]

Pretty sure you're in the right place, and yes, NF Construction works just fine with 1.12.3.

[Mossconfig]

So, I'm getting weird values for some of the xenon burning modes on engines. The Helicon is the worst, as the xenon burning EC weird number isn't showing up in game at all.

Also, is this EC amount correct? I checked the .cfg files and that's the correct ratio of Ec to Xenon but it seems impossible to generate. I'd mess around with the tweakpatch but the argon and lithium engines are working perfectly fine?

[SciMan]

It's not impossible to generate that much electricity, and yes those numbers are correct. (EDIT: Looking at it again, yeah that number for the EC draw of the xenon mode of that engine isn't right, or at least "it's right but only if you're not using an external balance patch that lets you run these engines without NFElectrical or NFSolar").

With the stock configs for those thrusters, you just need a nuclear reactor from Near Future Electrical if you're going to deep space, or large solar panels from Near Future Solar, if you're not going out past Duna orbit.

Something's weird here tho, there's obviously some MM patch doing something it shouldn't be doing (or not doing the thing it needs to do in a complete fashion).
Either way the fix is the same, find and fix or remove the offending MM patch, and if you want to you can install NFElectrical and/or NFSolar.

 

(continuation of original post, left for posterity):

There's a dang good reason that the largest generation capacities of those mods line up well with the electric charge requirements from the engines in the NF Propulsion mod.

The reason that those numbers are "weird" and not nice round numbers is that there's a limit to the precision of the variable types used (32 bit signed floating point number, IIRC).
Additionally, sometimes these engines (especially the PIT and VASMIR engines) have the ability to vary how much power you use, which leads to increases in performance when fed more power (higher ISP for higher power input, given the same thrust, per propellant). If you are having trouble keeping one of these engines powered you might try de-tuning it slightly to match the amount of power generation your craft has.

Additionally these engines are VERY MUCH designed to move large things around in space, slowly (or space probes less slowly, but then power generation again becomes a problem in such a small form factor).
So adding a couple additional mods to a save that has these mods in it would make a lot of sense. The mods I am thinking of are PersistentThrust and PersistentRotation, because when combined those two mods allow you to pilot a vessel with an extremely low TWR by allowing it to thrust while in on-rails time warp (and the one for rotation lets it hold a heading like prograde/retrograde/etc. without having to pop in and out of warp constantly).

Those two non-Nertea mods I mentioned also pair well with FarFutureTechnologies, if you want to add that to your save.

Edited June 19, 2022 by SciMan

[Mossconfig]

On 6/19/2022 at 10:49 AM, SciMan said:

some MM patch doing something it shouldn't be doing

I checked the log, and as far as I can tell there's a CTT patch and waterfall being applied, and nothing else.

 

On 6/19/2022 at 10:49 AM, SciMan said:

EC draw of the xenon mode

Look any the "near future systems manager" window. It shows argonmode and xenonmode using the same 100ec/s for some reason. When I launch it it uses the 100ec/s in both modes too.

 

*Reloading the game fixed it. High strangeness is happening around these parts. I'll go sacrifice a Kerbal to the kraken.

 

So xenon is supposed to fit in between the lithium engines and the argon engines? Idk, the little boost in ISP and thrust is kinda crazy compared to 30x heavier generator required... Maybe that niche should be reexamined, or at least the power requirements reduced from 30x to 3x.

[Tangle]

Surreal to think that we're approaching the point that I'll look at the "august 26" in the title and think "whoa, an update?!" before remembering it was last year.

[SciMan]

@Mossconfig

Well I can tell you right away that they should in fact be using far more than "100 EC/sec", those VASIMR thrusters are supposed to be extremely power-hungry.
Believe the numbers you see in the part info window before you believe the numbers in the NF Electrical info window.

That's why I say something's weird in your MM patches, because the power draw is TOO LOW, not TOO HIGH.

If I had to guess, I'd suspect you have KSP Interstellar Extended also installed. That's not great, KSPI-E has patches that make the NFElectrical reactors spit out Megajoules and not EC and makes the NF Ion engines both consume Megajoules and reduces their thrust by like 100x at least, because "hey silly use the PersistentThrust plugin that is a hard dependency for KSPI-E".

The biggest VASIMR engine in either mode should be drawing roughly 1k EC/s at full throttle without tweaking it, and if you crank the ISP up by letting it draw even more power it should be capable of drawing I think 2-3k EC/sec (the ISP gains are well worth it).

The xenon mode of them is good if you want a lot of thrust, but for that you're better off looking at the MPDT thrusters, which use Lithium as propellant (specifically the biggest one, you could almost make a lander engine out of that if you could only make the power generation equipment not weight quite so much).

The real nice thing about the VASIMR thrusters in argon mode is that they deliver "enough" thrust with "manageable" power draw, and spectacular ISP ("manageable" as long as you use the reactors and not the solar panels, quite frankly I think the electrical output of the solar panels needs to be re-examined in light of most of the "high-power" engines STARTING at around 1k EC/s and going up from there.

[Nertea]

On 6/18/2022 at 7:57 PM, Mossconfig said:

So, I'm getting weird values for some of the xenon burning modes on engines. The Helicon is the worst, as the xenon burning EC weird number isn't showing up in game at all.

Also, is this EC amount correct? I checked the .cfg files and that's the correct ratio of Ec to Xenon but it seems impossible to generate. I'd mess around with the tweakpatch but the argon and lithium engines are working perfectly fine?

This isn't a lot of info to go on, I can say that the intended value for both modes is 100/second, as shown in the systems manager panel. I'd check to see whether that rate is carried into flight properly, and if it is still wrong, post longs, MM cache, info, etc. 

[SciMan]

Oh right, that's the "little" VASIMR. I was thinking you were talking about the 2.5m one. That 2.5m one does indeed need at least 1000 EC/s in normal operation.

The little one should probably work out to around 100 EC/s. If it doesn't, then somethings getting messed with.

[Mossconfig]

On 6/23/2022 at 10:36 PM, Nertea said:

intended value for both modes is 100/second

really, are you sure? looking at the .cfg file it says this.

Quote

    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleEnginesFX
        engineID = ArgonMode
        runningEffectName = run_vasimr_argon_core
        powerEffectName= run_vasimr_argon_glow
        thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform
        exhaustDamage = True
        ignitionThreshold = 0.1
        minThrust = 0
        maxThrust = 3.67
        heatProduction = 54.745547
        EngineType = Electric
        PROPELLANT
        {
            name = ArgonGas
            DrawGauge = True
            ratio = 1.0
        }
        PROPELLANT
        {
            name = ElectricCharge
            ratio = 2.860187
            DrawGauge = True
            minResToLeave = 1.0
        }
        atmosphereCurve
        {
            key = 0 6000
            key = 1 60
            key = 2 0.001
        }
    }

    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleEnginesFX
        engineID = XenonMode
        runningEffectName = run_vasimr_xe_core
        powerEffectName= run_vasimr_xe_glow
        thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform
        exhaustDamage = True
        ignitionThreshold = 0.1
        minThrust = 0
        maxThrust = 6.22
        heatProduction = 48.452449
        EngineType = Electric
        PROPELLANT
        {
            name = XenonGas
            DrawGauge = True
            ratio = 1.0
        }
        PROPELLANT
        {
            name = ElectricCharge
            ratio = 63.064466
            DrawGauge = True
            minResToLeave = 1.0
        }

and all the multimode engines have diffrent EC consumption.

the argonmode and xenonmode use clearly diffrent ratios of EC.

 

it did get fixed without me doing anything, now every xenon mode uses the same crazy amount of EC, but if both modes are actually supposed to use the same EC as argon then somethng is really broken for me.

[Nertea]

17 minutes ago, Mossconfig said:

really, are you sure? looking at the .cfg file it says this.

and all the multimode engines have diffrent EC consumption.

 

the argonmode and xenonmode use clearly diffrent ratios of EC.

 

it did get fixed without me doing anything, now every xenon mode uses the same crazy amount of EC, but if both modes are actually supposed to use the same EC as argon then somethng is really broken for me.

Reading the CFG there doesn't mean much, the ratio term for ElectricCharge depends on the density of the corresponding resource. This is juust how a KSP config works. Of more relevancy is the VariableIspEngine block which does specify a specific EnergyUsage term for both:

MODULE
	{
		name = VariableISPEngine
		EnergyUsage = 99.999
		UseDirectThrottle = false
		CurThrustSetting = 50

		VARIABLEISPMODE
		{
			name = #LOC_NFPropulsion_Multimode_Argon_Short
			IspThrustCurve
			{
				key = 4500 4.85
				key = 6000 3.67
				key = 7500 2.50
			}
		}
		VARIABLEISPMODE
		{
			name = #LOC_NFPropulsion_Multimode_Xenon_Short
			IspThrustCurve
			{
				key = 3000 8.26
				key = 4000 6.22
				key = 5000 4.23
			}
		}
	}

This is what things should look like: 

https://imgur.com/a/TE2Zs8T

[Mossconfig]

7 hours ago, Nertea said:

density of the corresponding resource.

Do you think it could be realfuels? Here's my logs.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Tt-7C9a97Y-TsycYbmuRKFN9FKLGzaqa?usp=sharing

 

On 6/23/2022 at 10:36 PM, Nertea said:

I'd check to see whether that rate is carried into flight properly,

So, the vasmir engines use the correct amount of EC in flight, but the other xenon burning engines in flight and tooltip use the crazy amounts of EC.

[Starwaster]

57 minutes ago, Mossconfig said:

Do you think it could be realfuels? Here's my logs.

Unlikely. Real Fuels doesn't patch engines by itself and has not for years. 

The only mods touching the Vasimr engines in your install are NearFuturePropulsion, UmbraSpaceIndustries, B9PartSwitch and EngineGroupController (which I didn't realize was even a thing anymore. It's an RO mod)

 

[Mossconfig]

1 hour ago, Starwaster said:

EngineGroupController

I think it got bundled with ROengines.

1 hour ago, Starwaster said:

touching the Vasimr engines

Yeah but plenty of my mods touch the xenon, which is the larger problem I'm having, all xenon burning engines have funky EC requirements. The vasmir engines are better than most, they use the correct amount in flight, just a wierd tooltip. The other xenon only engines actually use the crazy EC amount in flight.

 

Edit, it's definitely either realfuels or realfuels-stock.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Mossconfig
updating without double posting

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, Mossconfig said:

I think it got bundled with ROengines.

Yeah but plenty of my mods touch the xenon, which is the larger problem I'm having, all xenon burning engines have funky EC requirements. The vasmir engines are better than most, they use the correct amount in flight, just a wierd tooltip. The other xenon only engines actually use the crazy EC amount in flight.

Ah. So I looked at your log and stuff. 

Your data:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
	{
		name = XenonGas
		displayName = Xenon Gas
		abbreviation = Xe
		density = 0.000005894
		unitCost = 0.8
		hsp = 120
		flowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW
		transfer = PUMP
		isTweakable = true
		volume = 1
		RESOURCE_DRAIN_DEFINITION
		{
			isDrainable = true
			showDrainFX = true
			drainFXPriority = 5
			drainForceISP = 5
			drainFXDefinition = gasDraining
		}
	}

Squad basic data

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
  name = XenonGas
  displayName = #autoLOC_501003 //#autoLOC_501003 = Xenon Gas
  abbreviation = #autoLOC_6002099 //#autoLOC_6002099 = Xe
  density = 0.0001  
  unitCost = 4
  hsp = 120
  flowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW
  transfer = PUMP
  isTweakable = true
  volume = 0.1
  RESOURCE_DRAIN_DEFINITION
  {
	isDrainable = true
	showDrainFX = true
	drainFXPriority = 5
	drainForceISP = 5
	drainFXDefinition = gasDraining
  }
}

Something in your install is modifying the density of XenonGas. I don't have a good way to tell which, but generally, modifying a base resource definition is a Very Bad Idea without informing all users that this could cause major incompatiblity issues with other mods.

Oh, it's RealFuels: https://github.com/NathanKell/ModularFuelSystem/blob/master/RealFuels/Resources/ResourcesFuel.cfg . I guess incompatibility is expected? 

[Mossconfig]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

I guess incompatibility is expected? 

I  think its something even stranger.

a clean install works.

 

Edit, a clean install of only realfuels and realfuels-stock, everything else same

Edited June 26, 2022 by Mossconfig

[Nertea]

42 minutes ago, Mossconfig said:

I  think its something even stranger.

a clean install works.

 

Edit, a clean install of only realfuels and realfuels-stock, everything else same

Yes, my post says that having RealFuels in your install will cause this problem.

[Mossconfig]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

Yes, my post says that having RealFuels in your install will cause this problem.

Are you saying that my most recent screenshot still has incorrect EC cost? These numbers are way lower than they used to be before I reinstalled realfuels, but its still installed. Even if they're still high its still better than what I was getting.

 

Edit, nope, it was the 000_needs rework folder that I had deleted when I was trying to find a strange always on particle effect and didn't put back. There's a patch in there that reduces the EC ratio manually for all the engines.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Mossconfig