KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[ABZB]

Version 1.4.9 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4

Released on 2015-09-02

• Re-balanced Warp Engine. It now has fixed charge cost which depend on vessel mass and warp drive strength, and maximum travel speed during warp depends on power produced by reactors. Warp Direction and throttle can now also be adjusted during warp
  
• Re-balanced Overheating Thermal Nozzle, overheating issues should be fixed now
  

- - - Updated - - -

Sounds good

where do the .png files live? they don't seem to be in the github folders

[ss8913]

Freethinker - you are the wind beneath my wings. Or, maybe that's ferram4... YOU are the .. thermal beneath my nozzle. That sounds dirty but I'm sticking with it. Thanks!

Also I am testing the mk2/mk3 IFS tanks tonight. Still using the stock models and textures, but they should be functional. I'll put it on dropbox for people to play with, but if you wanted to include it in KSPIE that'd be good. I basically matched the configs with the approximately-same-sized Interstellar tanks. Should allow for more efficient spaceplane designs, I'm hoping.

[X40c]

Version 1.4.9 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4

Released on 2015-09-02

• Re-balanced Warp Engine. It now has fixed charge cost which depend on vessel mass and warp drive strength, and maximum travel speed during warp depends on power produced by reactors. Warp Direction and throttle can now also be adjusted during warp
  
• Re-balanced Overheating Thermal Nozzle, overheating issues should be fixed now
  

- - - Updated - - -

Sounds good

Awsome, thanks a lot!

Freethinker - you are the wind beneath my wings. Or, maybe that's ferram4... YOU are the .. thermal beneath my nozzle. That sounds dirty but I'm sticking with it. Thanks!

Also I am testing the mk2/mk3 IFS tanks tonight. Still using the stock models and textures, but they should be functional. I'll put it on dropbox for people to play with, but if you wanted to include it in KSPIE that'd be good. I basically matched the configs with the approximately-same-sized Interstellar tanks. Should allow for more efficient spaceplane designs, I'm hoping.

Doesn't Mk2-KSPI Integration already do that?

[FreeThinker]

where do the .png files live? they don't seem to be in the github folders

Seems they were excluded. I uploaded them.

Btw, we don't have a proper water Map for Kerbin (it currently uses a single pixel), could you create and upload it as wel?

Edited September 3, 2015 by FreeThinker

[ss8913]

ABZB's Mk2-KSPI seems to want to work with a "mk2 expansion" - mine is a new set of parts that are reworks of the STOCK mk2 and mk3 tanks to support IFS fuels. I have it working, I'll post a .zip after I clean up some paths and get the size converters updated along with the main tank. Made a really nice Mk3 passenger shuttle using it... lots fewer parts, better framerates, just by having the ability to store IFS fuels in a native Mk3 part without having to fudge it with a cargo bay and a KSPI tank inside.

Also mine does mk3 and mk2. I think i've seen ABZB on this forum - he made the Mk2-KSPI integration - if either he or Freethinker want to consolidate/update/adapt what I've done into either module, that'd be for the best I think since what I've done really shouldn't be a separate module that people need to worry about

[X40c]

I seem to have a problem with a magnetic confinement fusion reactor on my AM harvesting station (which is kinda unnerving). I'm using a D-Li6 reactor, but it seems to only produce minuscule amounts of power, maybe its not connected to the generators anymore? It worked fine at the beginning, but after I added a new module to the station it started to act up. Waste heat is fine and fuel is abundant. There is a massive drain on the EC system, but it seems like my solar panels are still keeping the station alive, kinda. The CP generator seems to still work, I think, but the reactor is refusing to match demand.

[FreeThinker]

Technically, the generator reconnects after every reload or docking. Are you sure it isn't connected to a diferent heat source? Perhaps the reactor it was used to connect to was used by another generator somewhere on your vessel which can incure large heat transportation pennalties, effectively reducing power to miniscule amounts.

[X40c]

Currently there are only 2 generators (CP and TP) and 1 reactors on the station. I did use reactors for the thermal rockets I used to bring both the module and the station to orbit, but I undocked them afterwards and it didn't act up when I bought the station up and they had their own generators too. The reactor and the generators are stacked up directly and where properly connected previously.

The generators seem to also now generate minuscule amounts of power and I tried to change fuel types on the reactor which also changed the output on the reactor and the generators which suggests that they are indeed connected, but the reactor is still not trying to meet demand. It seems like there is something amiss with the demand and supply system on the KSPI power system.

[Nansuchao]

Did you looked at the Imbrittlenent percentage?

[ABZB]

ABZB's Mk2-KSPI seems to want to work with a "mk2 expansion" - mine is a new set of parts that are reworks of the STOCK mk2 and mk3 tanks to support IFS fuels. I have it working, I'll post a .zip after I clean up some paths and get the size converters updated along with the main tank. Made a really nice Mk3 passenger shuttle using it... lots fewer parts, better framerates, just by having the ability to store IFS fuels in a native Mk3 part without having to fudge it with a cargo bay and a KSPI tank inside.

Also mine does mk3 and mk2. I think i've seen ABZB on this forum - he made the Mk2-KSPI integration - if either he or Freethinker want to consolidate/update/adapt what I've done into either module, that'd be for the best I think since what I've done really shouldn't be a separate module that people need to worry about

It does have several features that ado ksp I functionality to a mk2 parts pack. It also patches all the liquid-fuel only tanks with ifs, leaving liquid fuel (or kerosene if RF is installed) as one of the options. This includes all size of the standard mk2 and mk3 fuselages, as well as those of various parts packs (ie OPT, mkiv, etc) LFO tanks are left as is as to leave a MFT option for those who have it also installed.

[tmbomber]

Yes, the magnetic nozzle is truely powerfull once you learn how to use it correctly. It allows you to perform experiments and travel to anywhere in the solar system in months rather than years without excessive fuel requirments. The biggest problem will be that it can be tricky to use it correctly. It's like traveling with a solar sail on steroids. That's why I hope to integrate it with solar sail navigator, which is specificly designed for low thrust acceleration

<heavy sigh> It appears I've yet to learn how to use it.

Last night I tried another magnetic nozzle vessel using a dusty plasma reactor. I was in a 610km orbit over Kerbin, and at 1/3 throttle I was getting a TWR of .06. I was watching my ap increase, and tried hitting the > key to warp time. Time went up to x5 and the engine's "warp thrust" fell to zero. The engine exhaust disappeared, and my ap stopped increasing. I hit < and brought time back to x1 and "warp thrust" returned to what it was, the engine exhaust re-appeared, and ap started increasing again.

I've no idea what I'm doing wrong.

I'm still experimenting with the super collider. I notice you still can't EVA to collect data. (When you try you get a "deploy" button that doesn't seem to do anything.)

I did the math and the bodies that the experiment is available for totals 25K if you return the data home, and half that if you transmit it. If you have a science bay it gives you the option of processing the data before transmitting, but when you try it the button says "+xxx data" and if you hit it the processing fails due to lack of storage space. (don't remember the exact number, but it was 6 or 9 hundred something)

Gotta go, but there's a couple other things I learned that I'll relate later.

[FreeThinker]

I don't understand why your warp dropped to 0, it normally only happens if you drop throtle to 0 before you enter warp. In what operating system and mode are you running KSP? Are you running some specific tools which manipuate time? or any other tools in the back ground?

Edited September 3, 2015 by FreeThinker

[ABZB]

I noticed this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/120899-HOWTO-Airbreathing-Engines-in-KSP-1-0

Is it possible that the thermal engine problem might be somehow due to it trying to read some value based off of the deprecated node?

[FreeThinker]

I noticed this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/120899-HOWTO-Airbreathing-Engines-in-KSP-1-0

Is it possible that the thermal engine problem might be somehow due to it trying to read some value based off of the deprecated node?

Sorry, what thermal engine problem were you refering to?

[ABZB]

the overheating thing? sleepy today. might not be totally coherent

[FreeThinker]

the overheating thing? sleepy today. might not be totally coherent

I guess you refer to thet thermal nozzle problem. No, the problem is that the nozzle had to show similar thermal heating behaviour with a variaty of engine with differnet Isp and power output. I originaly assumed the size also had some effect on the thermal behavior of the item, but as long as the mass of an item grows with cube, this should not be an issue. Now it should function wiith any combination of size, power and isp. Note that in contrast to regular engine, the heating does not stop by disipation but by an internal wasteheat cooling meganism. This ensure it will work even if you have Deadly reentry install which messed up the thermal dissapation.

- - - Updated - - -

BTW, this was quite useful for doing the gravitational lens experiment. Got the telescope out to 550 AU (and completed braking into orbit) in just a couple years with a fusion powered vessel, running the boron reaction.

Notice, THe Fission Fragment reactor (Dusty Plasma Bed Reactor + Magnetic Noozle) was actual specificly designed for this gravity lens experiment.

[X40c]

Did you looked at the Imbrittlenent percentage?

0.000%

Maybe it has something to do with the power requirements of fusion reactors? Seems like fusion reactors this patch will actually activate if you do not enough energy to power them, but will produce 0 power. It strangely didn't produce anything when I still had EC and why did it shutdown in the first place then?

[bos]

I don't understand why your warp dropped to 0, it normally only happens if you drop throtle to 0 before you enter warp. In what operating system and mode are you running KSP? Are you running some specific tools which manipuate time? or any other tools in the back ground?

I've seen this too. The warp throttle stays at the right percent, but warp thrust goes to zero Mn when entering warp. It doesn't happen 100% of the time, so toggling warp on/off/on/off until the thrust 'sticks' usually works. I suspect there is some kind of race condition going on where it might be getting 'thrust = 0' before 'hey we're in warp now' sometimes, but this is just guesswork.

Notice, THe Fission Fragment reactor (Dusty Plasma Bed Reactor + Magnetic Noozle) was actual specificly designed for this gravity lens experiment.

That worked pretty well too. It's a quite a bit heavier payload to feed the hungry hungry AGI core (5MW!) for the long journey with fission, but is certainly more near-term tech realistic .

Edited September 3, 2015 by bos

[ABZB]

Pull request that adds compatibility with OPM for the resource mining has been submitted.

[Kyrt Malthorn]

I apologize if the answer is staring me in the face, but I'm rather confused here. I have a gas core reactor that doesn't seem to want to operate at more than roughly 10.3% output. I noticed this problem on a starship I was building that was to use a gas core reactor for power; I wasn't getting nearly as much as the documentation said I should be getting. So I built a test setup on Kerbin. So I see that it's only got an output of like, 2%. I glance at your chart and it says the MINIMUM usage is 20%. Uh oh. So I theorized I must not have enough USAGE to maintain the reactor in a normal state. So back at Kerbin I built a mockup to test that theory.

What I have: insane amounts of ore and an empty Lf/O fuel tank to match, and 8 (yes, eight) stock-game ISRU's running the LF/O processes, as well as the Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer independant processes. So, 24 stock game ISRU processes concurrently; the whole point is to simulate massive power draw. A "control group" pebble bed reactor was able to power most of them with nothing odd intervening. So off with the pebble bed reactor, and hook up the Mk1 gas core reactor.

STILL not working? It's output is hanging right around 10.28%, still under the listed minimum, and it struggles to power even 4 out of my 24 ISRU processes.

The only thing I can think is, do I need more radiators? But I'm not generating waste heat... at all. All my testing has been on Kerbin, and I've NEVER seen waste heat show itself.

I'm not moving so it's not the buoyancy affect.

The core temperature is not as advertised.

It just can't seem to get up to its minimum operating temperature. Did I accidentally make a molten core nuclear reactor instead of a gas core, or what???

EDIT: Additional info ...

KSP 1.0.4

KSPI-E 1.4.7

Edited September 3, 2015 by Kyrt Malthorn
Version info

[Trolllception]

I also periodically have 0 waste heat generation from KSPI stuff. When this occurs my vessels slowly start heating up instead of generating any wasteheat. Are you noticing any part heating?

[FreeThinker]

Pull request that adds compatibility with OPM for the resource mining has been submitted.

Great, could you also create a Water resource map for Kerbin? it appears to be missing

- - - Updated - - -

I apologize if the answer is staring me in the face, but I'm rather confused here. I have a gas core reactor that doesn't seem to want to operate at more than roughly 10.3% output. I noticed this problem on a starship I was building that was to use a gas core reactor for power; I wasn't getting nearly as much as the documentation said I should be getting. So I built a test setup on Kerbin. So I see that it's only got an output of like, 2%. I glance at your chart and it says the MINIMUM usage is 20%. Uh oh. So I theorized I must not have enough USAGE to maintain the reactor in a normal state. So back at Kerbin I built a mockup to test that theory.

What I have: insane amounts of ore and an empty Lf/O fuel tank to match, and 8 (yes, eight) stock-game ISRU's running the LF/O processes, as well as the Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer independent processes. So, 24 stock game ISRU processes concurrently; the whole point is to simulate massive power draw. A "control group" pebble bed reactor was able to power most of them with nothing odd intervening. So off with the pebble bed reactor, and hook up the Mk1 gas core reactor.

STILL not working? It's output is hanging right around 10.28%, still under the listed minimum, and it struggles to power even 4 out of my 24 ISRU processes.

http://i.imgur.com/1JF5RhT.jpg

The only thing I can think is, do I need more radiators? But I'm not generating waste heat... at all. All my testing has been on Kerbin, and I've NEVER seen waste heat show itself.

I'm not moving so it's not the buoyancy affect.

The core temperature is not as advertised.

It just can't seem to get up to its minimum operating temperature. Did I accidentally make a molten core nuclear reactor instead of a gas core, or what???

EDIT: Additional info ...

KSP 1.0.4

KSPI-E 1.4.7

This remind me to improve that status messages. The Gas Core reactor simulates an open cycle gas core reactor design. This means there is no physical barrier between the fuel and the propellant. The separation is maintained by a vortex. The advantage is that is allows very high core temperatures. The disadvantage, is that is suffers from buoyancy effects. Whenever the engine is under the influence of any acceleration, which includes gravity (=1G), the vortex will lose containment, reducing your power and making your lose uranium fuel. That's actually a lot worse than just losing power and expansive fuel, your are poisoning the atmosphere with deadly radiation! Fortunately for you I haven't implemented the effects yet, it would contaminate the entire launch side with deadly uranium dust particles, making all your engineers and scientist sick. It would effectively destroy the Kerbal Space Program and end your career. So unless you in orbit, the Gas Core Reactor is not very effective and your far better of with either the Salt Core Reactor or Pebble Bed Reactor

Edited September 3, 2015 by FreeThinker

[SciMan]

@FreeThinker:

You might need to tweak the configs on the OLD warp-drive parts (the circular non-folding ones).

In the config of all three, I find these two lines don't line up with the config for the new (folding) warp drive:

techRequired = none

category = none

The first line means the parts won't show up in the tech tree (unless that's taken care of by a MM patch from this mod).

The second line makes the parts not show up in the "basic" VAB/SPH part list if previously unlocked (confirmed not taken care of by any MM patch included with the mod).

I know that the game still knows the parts exist, because loading a ship that has them already on it in the VAB/SPH still works, and it doesn't break craft that are in flight with that part already either.

The parts also show up if I look for them by bulkhead profile or "size" in the Advanced options in the VAB/SPH. The problem is that the unassigned category means they don't show up unless you search for them "extra hard" compared to previous versions.

Previously, the category line put them in the "Propulsion" category, for some reason. This put them in with all the fuel tanks, instead of the engines like I think you were trying to do.

The proper category name for doing that would be "Engine", as the engines and fuel tanks are now separate, and "Propulsion" is a legacy category now.

Estimated bug priority: MINOR - Config file bug. Easy to fix, minor impact to gameplay, doesn't break saves, and probably doesn't even require a version number increment. EDIT 3: Fixed this problem manually on my end, along with changes in EDIT 2.

EDIT: Relatedly, I still don't see a 5m warp drive in the non-folding form factor. Not too big of a deal, as the folding one goes to 5m, so I can make do with that for now. The non-folding one would look better for what I have in mind, tho.

EDIT 2:

Also, the 1.25m standard warp drive is MORE EXPENSIVE in Funds cost than the 2.5m drive. Uhh, WHAT?

This is an old bug, but the fix is, yet again, more config tweaking. Probably just swap the cost of the 1.25 and 2.5m warp drives.

Smaller and less capable should cost less, correct?

Edited September 3, 2015 by SciMan

[FreeThinker]

I've seen this too. The warp throttle stays at the right percent, but warp thrust goes to zero Mn when entering warp. It doesn't happen 100% of the time, so toggling warp on/off/on/off until the thrust 'sticks' usually works. I suspect there is some kind of race condition going on where it might be getting 'thrust = 0' before 'hey we're in warp now' sometimes, but this is just guesswork.

Are you sure you were not in a suborbital state? But perhaps your right and a racing condition does somehow occurs. Perhaps I can compensate for it, or allow some kind manual override.

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@FreeThinker:

You might need to tweak the configs on the OLD warp-drive parts (the circular non-folding ones).

In the config of all three, I find these two lines don't line up with the config for the new (folding) warp drive:

techRequired = none

category = none

The first line means the parts won't show up in the tech tree (unless that's taken care of by a MM patch from this mod).

The second line makes the parts not show up in the "basic" VAB/SPH part list if previously unlocked (confirmed not taken care of by any MM patch included with the mod).

I know that the game still knows the parts exist, because loading a ship that has them already on it in the VAB/SPH still works, and it doesn't break craft that are in flight with that part already either.

The parts also show up if I look for them by bulkhead profile or "size" in the Advanced options in the VAB/SPH. The problem is that the unassigned category means they don't show up unless you search for them "extra hard" compared to previous versions.

Previously, the category line put them in the "fuel tanks" category, for some reason. I would suggest all warp drives belong in the "Utility" category, because that's where they were when Fractal was updating the mod.

If you don't think they belong in Utility, I would suggest putting them in Engines, because they result in the vessel being set in motion.

Estimated bug priority: MINOR - Config file bug. Easy to fix, minor impact to gameplay, doesn't break saves, and probably doesn't even require a version number increment.

EDIT: Relatedly, I still don't see a 5m warp drive in the non-folding form factor. Not too big of a deal, as the folding one goes to 5m, so I can make do with that for now. The non-folding one would look better for what I have in mind, tho.

My intention was to phase out the old warp model in favor of the new warp model which is clearly superior both in looks and functionality (less drag in atmosphere)

[ABZB]

Yeah. I can build it from scans at... or actually just grab the 6.4 scale Kerbin map.