KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[ss8913]

I can't turn the throttle down below 1% is the problem. The hyperdrive is rated at like 200c on this craft - 1% of 200 is 2, which is 2.0c and way too fast for short distance jumps - by the time KSP decides to recognize my input to turn the drive off, I've hit the planet already. I'd like basically to be able to go 0.10c with any hyperdrive that's capable of going *at least* that fast.

[SciMan]

Agreed with the need for sub-light warping. Now, I can barely hit Kerbin's SOI at lowest warp, without hitting the planet itself (Actually warped THRU the planet the last time I was able to return to Kerbin successfully, no timewarp, minimum warp throttle).

Having the first 3 warp levels be fixed at "0.10c, 0.5c, 1.0c" would be extremely useful.

The current situation also makes it VERY difficult to manipulate a craft's orbit by using Jool's gravity well in combination with the warp drive.

It's still possible with Kerbol's gravity well, but that's only because you can't escape it.

Even Jool's entire SOI takes less than 5 seconds to cross, AT MINIMUM WARP.

There has to be a "Low-gear" to the warp drive, or something like that. The old version was limited to 20c, and I can't see why you would need any more than that unless you used some "other star systems" mod or something like that, and even then I don't know.

Basically, I want enough control over the low-speed regime of the warp-drive's operation, that I would be able to perform a "Picard Maneuver"

(

).

That's the best way I can describe it, to be honest. I want to be able to turn OFF the warp drive nearly instantly after I turn it ON.

I would also like the minimum warp speed to be fixed at 0.10C, no matter how fast the warp drive is capable of moving the ship.

However, If I can only have one of those two, the fixed minimum warp speed would be my choice. I understand that it can be a massive pain to get a program loop to respond quicker once it's coded, without having to re-write the whole thing.

Some warp drives theories state that you still couldn't break the speed of light, but they would still work. So it makes sense that warp drives can go sub-light.

[FreeThinker]

Seems I did not realise the full implications of the reblancing. Warp speed is currently a function of (power * vesselmass / warpdrivemass). This means if you combine a strong warpdrive with a small vessel with power reactor, you can reach very high warp speeds. I still think that this is a good basis for warp travel as mass and power are the major drivers. The old model was unbalanced because it did not matter how far you traveled.

However, I might be able, to create a combination of the 2 systems. Basicly every warp speed should requires a minimum amount of power to maintain. The exotic matter storage will act as the power buffer. The higher your desired speed, the more power you need. If you have insufficient power for a specific power level, you drop one speed level. The minimum speed would be 0.1c after that you are forced to drop out of out of warp.

Edited September 11, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Bishop149]

usage of KAS fuel line (between two ships) gives same bug as docking.

As far as I can tell a KAS fuel line connection is indistinguishable from a regular docking.

Some musings on the atmospheric scoop, which most of my recent designs have centered around.

Basically I think the model is a pain in the backside, its fine when it at its default scale but as soon as you start scaling it up is rapidly become very unwieldy. The actual scoop bit isn't so bad (although that too is scary big at 3-400%) its the curved flange bits that are a pain as they don't really fit around scaled up tanks (who want to scale a tank to 10m anyway!) and if you try and put more than 4 radially they will always overlap / clip which can make for ships that are prone to random physics bug flip outs / explosions

Personally in my game I think I'm gonna swap the model for either the stock radial intake (the one that used to be part of Spaceplane Plus) or nick this large radial one from MkIV spaceplane system:

I'll have a play around with how to scale them etc and let you know how I get on.

Also the scoops power requirements seem a little on the high side to me, now I don't know the real world power requirements involved in sucking in atmosphere, separating the gases and turning them to liquid but it seems odd to me that it's higher than any of the ISRU reactions and just over half what it takes to mine and refine uranium ore.

It's possible that all the ISRU type reactions power requirements might requires some thought / re-balancing, if realism in the goal.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Bishop149

[FreeThinker]

Well regarding the atmospheric scoop, I m not satified either. I agree the model isn't particualr nice looking.especialy on SSTO it looks plain ugly compaired to air intakes. One thing I never understaat is why can't the airscoop and air intake be combined. It would make SSTO much nicer to look at, and reduce part count

Edited September 11, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Bishop149]

One thing I never understaat is why can't the airscoop and air intake be combined.

Can they not?

Is putting the "ISRUScoop" and "ModuleResourceIntake" modules on the same part not possible?

[walaykin]

Upshot: Docked ships can't share power generating capacity. . . . . unless they were launched pre-docked.

But I've *done* exactly that - launched a crew section with a molten salt/thermal generator, then separately launched a drive section with a fusion/DT-Vista, docked them together, boosted, shut the fusion down, then later used the molten salt to power the fusion restart.

It definitely worked fine. This was in 1.2.6 I think? It was my entire orbital assembly build strategy.

[FreeThinker]

Can they not?

Is putting the "ISRUScoop" and "ModuleResourceIntake" modules on the same part not possible?

Yes is should definitely be possible, but we can go one step further. Make them work together! Instead of a specialized AtmosphericSscoop part module, we would have a AtmosphericProcessor, which uses any correctly connected ModuleResourceIntake to collect atmosphere and turn it into useful basic resources. This will effectively give the player the freedom to use any number of stock or modded air scoops and use it to feed the AtmosphericProcessor with atmosphere. This allows SSTO to use the Airscoops both for their Air engines or to convert the air into propellants

- - - Updated - - -

But I've *done* exactly that - launched a crew section with a molten salt/thermal generator, then separately launched a drive section with a fusion/DT-Vista, docked them together, boosted, shut the fusion down, then later used the molten salt to power the fusion restart.

It definitely worked fine. This was in 1.2.6 I think? It was my entire orbital assembly build strategy.

I'm pretty sure the bug has been around for a long time. It might have worked partially by accidentally due to a mistake on my side but in the original code it certainly didn't

Edited September 11, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Bishop149]

Atmosphere processor idea is cool, is it one you plan to implement?

I did some testing in replacing the model, pictures below, the battery in the middle is 10m scale.

I think my favourite is the last one, it has nicely balanced dimensions, but I can't get the bloody texture to work (posted about it here)

The stock radial intake version texture works but on balance I think the intake area looks a little small and it gets very long when scaled up.

[SciMan]

RE: Atmospheric processors;

Good to see that you thought of the possibility of replacing the pre-coolers with the atmospheric processors, because the pre-coolers are boring, required for spaceplanes that use atmospheric propulsion modes, and "magic" because they defy and/or handwave the laws of physics.

That last one is a big problem, and the second one is, essentially, a "Spaceplane Tax" paid by addition of dead weight that can't do anything else.

Right now it seems like pre-coolers are just a "get out of SABRE heating (with this small mass penalty) card", because it doesn't even load the WasteHeat system (where's the atmospheric heat going?), or consume any power (what's powering the heat pumps?).

Here's more reasons why, I think the pre-coolers are due for a re-write, these ones based on gameplay problems and/or possible exploits.

I don't like that a 0.625m pre-cooler can take care of a 3.75m intake on a spaceplane with a 5m thermal turbojet.

I also don't like that 2 structural intakes can't be taken care of by one pre-cooler.

Seems it should go by an area ratio or something, instead. By that, I mean a pre-cooler would have a certain amount of intake area it can handle, which would just so happen to match the amount of intake that a 1.25m shock-cone intake provides. This parameter would scale with part size changes, of course.

RE: "Slow" Warping, etc.;

So, the warp drives would have throttle levels like this?

0.1C, 0.5C (maybe?), 1%, 2%, etc.

The one part I didn't quite understand was the whole "minimum power to maintain warp speed" thing. Would that imply that the warp-drive's storage of ExoticMatter would be essentially a "fuel tank" re-filled by the ship's power sources while "charging" is active, and drained at a certain rate for each warp throttle level?

In other words, if I've got this right, if a fully charged warp drive can hold a charge while not actually being re-charged, the ship would have a limited "warp range" for each warp throttle level, with lower warp speeds being able to go further than faster warp speeds (for the same ship).

Like you said, the power requirements would scale with how fast you want to go.

I assume that warp throttle set to 100% would use 100% of the ship's available power (in MW) no matter how fast that ends up making the ship go, correct?

That would mean that very fast warps could be done by setting the throttle over 100%, but they wouldn't be sustainable. I think the warp drive should actually totally disengage at the end of one of these unsustainable jumps, with the drive displaying distance to warp-drop for unsustainable warps.

[Profit-]

@freethinker

Because I am kinda a figures guy....

The best current super capacitor is 12 wh/kg (lithium ion based)

Superconductive magnetic energy storage used by utilities is 1-10 wh/kg certainly not weight optimized since it is on the ground.

I assume with the new superconductors and new materials research in supercapacitors could change this dramatically.

Specifically the new -70 degree superconductor (massive weight savings on keeping it cool as you do not need to use vacuum flask tech)and the .8v super capacitor that for a couple microwatts makes an energy density of 51 wh/kg could be huge game changers, there are also some others that are theoretically hitting 110wh/kg

Still... 40 megawatts at 51wh/kg would be over 780 metric tons.

Edited September 12, 2015 by Profit-

[FreeThinker]

I think we need to get accurate

By 12 wh/kg, you mean 12 WATT HOURS/ KILOGRAM right? That means a capacitator of 1 metric kilogram has the equivalent power to supply 12 Watt of electric power for 1 (earth) hour.

In KSP everything is in seconds. So 12 wh would be equivalent to 12 x 60 x 60 / 1,000,000 = 0.0432 MW/s. Now let's assume the mass of the 2.5m capacitator has a mass of 1 ton. That means we could store 1000kg * 0.0432 = 43.2 MW/s. So it appears we got our MW capacitator to start our fusion engine after all

Edited September 12, 2015 by FreeThinker

[walaykin]

It might have worked partially by accidentally due to a mistake on my side but in the original code it certainly didn't

Gulp. Sounds like my playthrough was a real dice-roll then. But IIUC it's fixed in the code now?

I like the new stuff BTW - doing a non-KSPI-E playthrough at the moment, am sorely missing the thermal engines!

[Bishop149]

Well, I got the texture working!

I think this would make for a pretty good replacement model for the atmospheric scoop, I nicked it from this mod. The license is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 so I guess its fine if you wanted to switch it officially . . . . . that mod actually uses your FuelSwitch so I can't imagine the author objecting but I guess it would be polite to ask.

I can post up the modified files if you like?

[FreeThinker]

Yes, that would be usefull

[FreeThinker]

Version 1.5 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4

Released on 2015-09-12

• Added Arcjet RCS Tank which is a double Fuel switch and 4x4 Arcjet RCS (2000s) (textures Credits go to silversilver)
  
• Added Closed Cycle Gas Core Engine (according to Nasa Light-bulb specs)
  
• Increased maximum Isp Risistojet RCS to 825 s (3 times un-powered Isp )
  
• Increased Power Open Cycle Gas Core Engine by 40%
  
• Decreased Thermal Power Efficiency of Open Cycle Gas Core Engine to 40%
  
• Doubled Mass and Power
  
• Fixed ability to share power after docking vessels
  
• Fixed KSPI Electric RCS ability to store it's selected propellant
  
• Updated IFS to 1.16
  
• Updated CRP to 0.4.4
  

New Arcjet RCS Tank by silversilver:

Edited September 12, 2015 by FreeThinker

[MatterBeam]

Can someone briefly tell me how well the latest version of KSPI-E integrates with RSS and Realism Overhaul's techtree ect?

[barfing_skull]

Apologies if this has been asked before, looked back a few pages, did the (admittedly awful) search.

The first page of this thread has many of the reactors listed in GW, however, in-game, they're about the same number of MW. The Alcubierre drive takes absolutely forever to charge. I'm trying the Magnetic Confinement Fusion reactor. Sure it runs....

I seem to remember in the old Interstellar that they'd charge in a reasonable amount of time. Is there something I'm missing here?

Cheers,

-BS

[Bishop149]

Yes, that would be usefull

Here:

http://ge.tt/8C6JZqN2/v/0

[KnightMoritz]

Due to the issue I have with this mod, I was asked to put this question here.

I have a really pain in the ass problem with this mod. I'm not sure if it's a bug but I tried on a few configs (included fresh instance of KSP). I'm running version 1.0.4 and 1.5 version of the mod (previous one didn't work as well). So, the issue is, with alcubierre drive. When I collect all the antimatter, convert it into exotic matter with the reactor and generator... start the warp travel. And nothing! The Warp Effect is there, but stats are showing warp factor 0.000c and I'm standing still. Nothing moves by an inch. I'm still in control of my vessel, it seems that some scripting doesn't work. I have module manager 2.6.7. I attach some screenshots. the initial data (just before the jump) were okay (numbers like 99.932c warp factor and other. just as I start the warp drive, it's 0.000)

So, here are screenshots of the issue.

New discoveries about the warp drive: It works. Only in timewarp. So I am unable to plan maneuvers or anything. And it does some sort of jumping. Turning the timewarp> it goes to warp, stops, I have to change timewarp speed and then it goes again. figures.

I was asked by FreeThinker to post power manager screenshot. So, I've built some ridiculous ship to test the power output/power demand. This one did not reach orbit, but previous tests suggested that if the power output is the same as power demand, the drive don't work. with an antimatter reactor. right. Well yeah, the numbers weren't straight when I installed the mod. Like power output of antimatter reactor is what like not even a GW? This didn't feel right.

well, here it is. every other test shows the same, power demand=power output. No matter what I do. I can ofc stack like thousand of reactors because my computer handles that easily, but I'm not sure if that's the point.

I don't mean ofcourse to be rude, if someone felt that I am. Would be great if I got your help guys.

[EnigmaG]

Alcubierre drive works fine for me.

0,006c with 23MW (3xGas Core 0,625[Auxiliary Power Unit]), of course if i go below 8% it shows 0,000c with me, too.

5,670c with 21GW (2xAntiMatter 1,25)

How much power have you?

PS: Is LqdDeteurium + Lithium fusion no longer available?

Edited September 13, 2015 by EnigmaG

[SciMan]

I was going to post a bunch of stuff about using charged particle generators, and about making sure you have enough antimatter, but I looked at your screenshots again and noticed that you have charged particle generators already, and ~12 2.5m Antimatter reactors only generating 2GW.

That should be generating about a Terawatt of power.

The only problem I can think of that would be causing this is that you don't have radiator or generator upgrades, but you should still be getting more power than you are.

I'm running KSP 1.0.4 and KSPI-E 1.5, and my Antimatter reactors are running just fine. I don't know what the problem with your install is, to be honest.

Try a full reinstall of KSPI-E (DELETE the WarpPlugin folder, then install the new version).

Sometimes having old files hanging around does odd things.

RE: Nuclear Lightbulb engine;

Good to see that there's a new kind of engine, but I think it's lacking something.

It's currently inferior to the combination of a fission reactor and thermal nozzle, because I can't attach a generator to it for power.

Requiring a totally separate reactor for power means that there's very very few times where it makes sense to use the nuclear lightbulb.

I understand if this is intentional, but there should be a version that can work for power and/or propulsion.

I want to like the nuclear lightbulb engine, but as it is right now I don't see myself using it.

RE: Warp drives;

I thought there was supposed to be a minimum velocity of 0.100C with warp drives?

I would think that warp drives would require Fusion power at the very least, which means it should require about half a gigawatt of power for any of the warp drives at 1.25m size, no matter how light the rest of the ship is.

In other words, hard lower speed limit of 0.100C, with a hard lower power requirement of 500MW. That should be enough to stop the whole "why not stick a warp drive on everything" problem that occurs when you can power a warp drive with 23MW.

RE: D-Li6 fusion power;

As far as I know, D-Li6 fusion should still work, but you have to have LqdDeuterium and Lithium on the ship before the reactor will let you pick that fuel mode.

Edited September 13, 2015 by SciMan

[Nansuchao]

If my memory works, A/M reactor have throttle control, so they produce energy only by request of the ship, otherwise you'll need so much radiators that you'll be able to create only ridicolous ships, so, until you don't start the charge of WarpDrive, youl'have just enough energy than the ship request.

[FreeThinker]

RE: Nuclear Lightbulb engine;

Good to see that there's a new kind of engine, but I think it's lacking something.

It's currently inferior to the combination of a fission reactor and thermal nozzle, because I can't attach a generator to it for power.

Requiring a totally separate reactor for power means that there's very very few times where it makes sense to use the nuclear lightbulb.

I understand if this is intentional, but there should be a version that can work for power and/or propulsion.

I want to like the nuclear lightbulb engine, but as it is right now I don't see myself using it.

The simple fact is Gas Core reactors are not mend for Power Generation. The Gas core reactor represent an extreme design reactor, mend for providing high fuel efficient, high power propulsion in early KSPI carreer. The Closed Cycle Gas Core reactor has the big advantage over the open cycle gas core of being able to be used under high G force conditions and doesn't contaminate the environment like the open gas core. It fills the hole between Low Isp Molten Salt Reactor / PebbleBed and Ultra High Magnetic Noozle Isp. This makes it suitable for both launch rocket and orbital transfers in early career.

RE: Warp drives;

I thought there was supposed to be a minimum velocity of 0.100C with warp drives?

I would think that warp drives would require Fusion power at the very least, which means it should require about half a gigawatt of power for any of the warp drives at 1.25m size, no matter how light the rest of the ship is.

In other words, hard lower speed limit of 0.100C, with a hard lower power requirement of 500MW. That should be enough to stop the whole "why not stick a warp drive on everything" problem that occurs when you can power a warp drive with 23MW.

Improvement and re-balances are planned for next release. I want to incorporate several ideas, including fixed Minimum warp speed, and minimum warp power requirements, and perhaps incorporate gravity wells effects. I want to make it difficult, not impossible to use low tech reactors to start warp. You will be able to reach warp, but not very fast or long, requiring a vessel with a high warp to vessel mass ratio.

Edited September 13, 2015 by FreeThinker

[EnigmaG]

RE: Warp drives;

I thought there was supposed to be a minimum velocity of 0.100C with warp drives?

I would think that warp drives would require Fusion power at the very least, which means it should require about half a gigawatt of power for any of the warp drives at 1.25m size, no matter how light the rest of the ship is.

In other words, hard lower speed limit of 0.100C, with a hard lower power requirement of 500MW. That should be enough to stop the whole "why not stick a warp drive on everything" problem that occurs when you can power a warp drive with 23MW.

No needed, it would take over 60 days to charge(reactors exhaustion starts before), the Gas Core reactors are only for CO2 collying, life support and AM containment.

Edited September 13, 2015 by EnigmaG