KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[FreeThinker]

I suspect the amount of peek power generated is not enough to start the fusion reactor, I need to add those capacitators.

Edited September 29, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Profit-]

I suspect the amount of peek power generated is not enough to start the fusion reactor, I need to add those capacitators.

That is not the case, the fusion reactor actually is running and the only power generated in this setup is from the charged particle generator below it (29GW of charged particles)

You can see it is running flat out in this picture ->

http://postimg.org/image/go80sg6a3/full/

Edited September 29, 2015 by Profit-

[FreeThinker]

Seems almost as if the reactor is not allowed to generate power. At least it is behaving that way. What if you used only the salt core reactor and a thermal generator?

[Profit-]

I will test that after work, till then, Using the alternative setup, I have my speed back =)

(Hehehe)

[wolfman29]

Well this sounds as a differnt problem. The MFC is not very good for high thrust propulsion (only 60% efficient) combine this with High Isp and High atmospheric pressure, and you end up with low thrust for lauch from Kerbin. A better configuration would be the reverse. Use the DUMBO for thermal propulsion/auxilery power and the MFC for high efficient electric/magnetic nozzle propulsion.

Btw, I would be realy nice if someone create me a nozzle with a smaller throth , optimised for atmosphere

This would make sense, except I am only getting around 120 ISP on the low-thrust. Isn't it supposed to be highly efficient?

And while I'm here - how do I get the supercollider working? Not sure how it generates data.

Edited September 29, 2015 by wolfman29

[FreeThinker]

Isp efficiency is proportionaly related to thrust. If you lose 90% thrust due to atmospheric pressure, you also lose 90% Isp.

The problems is the thermal nozzle is optimised to operate in vacuum. This is also one of the reasons reason why big rockets have multiple smaller noozles instead of one big nozzle. The smaller nozzles would operate better in an atmosphere, allowing it to generate more lift durring lauch

Edited September 29, 2015 by FreeThinker

[wolfman29]

Oh, I understand. Thanks for the clarifications!

[RenewableRocket]

I will test that after work, till then, Using the alternative setup, I have my speed back =)

https://youtu.be/Pj0QWOTI4tg

(Hehehe)

Awesome puff of smoke... 'nuff said.

[FreeThinker]

Sadly, I seem to have hit a bug first thing on the new version. When I have a MSR on top of a thermal converter with a fusion reactor below it causes the thermal converter to not work. This use to work in the old versions, and it should have about 100,000MW (yes MW) of thermal power right now. (one other small note, I miss the large heat radiators, the other ones, do not scale up enough, as they are capped at 400% =( )

http://s17.postimg.org/49l8s4erz/image.png

Further experimentation, if I add another generator, it fixes the problem.

http://s21.postimg.org/cufkx99bb/image.png

(This does make sense, as there are differing reactor temperatures so it cannot figure out efficiency but it seems like it should at least pick one.)

AT further inspection, the problem seems an overheating problem. Notice your waste-heat is very high, this will cause efficiency to drop very low. After it reaches 0, you will no longer generate any power

The problem is caused because I lowered the temperature to the realistic upper limit of salt core reactor. However, the function that is repsonsible for calculating efficiency, still assumes very high temperatures. I need to somehow compensate for this.

Notice the difference between Cold Bath and Hot Bath, it translates directly into electric thermal efficiency.

Hot Bath = reactor Core Temperature

Cold Bath = average Radiator Temperature.

Efficiency = (1 - Cold Bath / Hot Bath) * 0.6

Once Radiators become as hot as reactor Core Temperature, you no longer produce any power. Simply put, a shortage of radiator power or radiator that get too hot. Now this is on the surface, it becomes worse in space.

Edited September 29, 2015 by FreeThinker

[SciMan]

The main problem I see here is that you're trying to use one generator for two reactors.

You need a minimum of one generator of the correct type, per reactor. If you put those reactors back-to-back, with the thermal generator on the molten salt reactor and the charged particle generator on the fusion reactor, it should work. Alternatively, put a part between the fusion reactor and the thermal generator.

If a reactor outputs multiple types of power (charged AND thermal for most fusion reactions, the dusty plasma reactor, and Antimatter reactors), you can put one generator of each type on it. But, each reactor MUST have at least one generator, all to itself. Otherwise nothing works.

This is only for the case of a reactor being used solely for power generation. You can have 2 generators and a thermal nozzle or thermal turbojet on a craft, and it will work because thermal nozzles can draw thermalPower from reactors anywhere in the same stack (less efficient for more parts between reactor and nozzle).

Hope that helps. Maybe someday reactors will be able to share generators, but right now they cant.

Not sure if thermal nozzles can get power from multiple reactors in line, and I don't have power problems that would require such a configuration right now, but I could see someone using it earlier in the tech tree.

[silversliver]

Because two bugs is better than one.

1-The nuclear TORY ramjet should work at high speeds right? No.(You can see the number of Mach in the KER window)

http://i57.tinypic.com/an27gk.jpg

2-There isn't ArgonGas in the options of ModularFuelTanks. Is intended or a bug?

I've seen in the code of the MFT patch that there actually argon IS present but in game is not showed.

It might by just my problem because I have the various NearFutureTechnologies installed and maybe there's a conflict.

[Psitticine]

Btw, I would be realy nice if someone create me a nozzle with a smaller throth , optimised for atmosphere

What exactly do you need there? New model? Or the configuration/performance info?

[FreeThinker]

What exactly do you need there? New model? Or the configuration/performance info?

I need a new model. Basically it need a tighter throat. Ideally, there would be multiple throat models, allowing players to customize.

[Trolllception]

2-There isn't ArgonGas in the options of ModularFuelTanks. Is intended or a bug?

I've seen in the code of the MFT patch that there actually argon IS present but in game is not showed.

It might by just my problem because I have the various NearFutureTechnologies installed and maybe there's a conflict.

Either the resource name changed to ArgonGas or I incorrectly have 'Argon' in the patch. Try to change the value of Argon to ArgonGas in the 'MFT_KSPI.cfg' file located at /KSPDirectory/WarpPlugin/Patches

[dankis]

MAJOR BUG REPORT: Fuel flow of thermal turbojet is capped at 1.0U. That means atmospheric thrust of 2m pebble bed reactor mk2 is the same as 5m version. This is also problematic for different reactors but for pebble, its game-breaking.

[RenewableRocket]

Either the resource name changed to ArgonGas or I incorrectly have 'Argon' in the patch. Try to change the value of Argon to ArgonGas in the 'MFT_KSPI.cfg' file located at /KSPDirectory/WarpPlugin/Patches

Indeed, both the @TANK_DEFINITION[Default,Fuselage,Balloon,Structural] and the @TANK_DEFINITION[Xenon] used Argon, instead of ArgonGas.

[silversliver]

Either the resource name changed to ArgonGas or I incorrectly have 'Argon' in the patch. Try to change the value of Argon to ArgonGas in the 'MFT_KSPI.cfg' file located at /KSPDirectory/WarpPlugin/Patches

Changed the name to ArgonGas and now works.

[FreeThinker]

[h=2]Version 1.5.8 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4[/h] Released on 2015-09-29

• Added Wrap Around Radiator
  
• Radiator now caped by average core temperature instead of lowest temperate which allows you to combines low temperature and high temperature reactor much more effective
  
• Molten Salt Reactor Core Temperature gains 50% Hot Bath bonus for Power production, allowing it to be as effective as it was
  
• Fixed exceptions when multiple Reactor windows are opened
  
• Fixed Definition Argon in Modular Fuel Tanks to ArgonGas
  
• Updated IFS to 1.17
  

[Profit-]

Version 1.5.8 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4

Released on 2015-09-29

• Added Wrap Around Radiator
  
• Radiator now caped by average core temperature instead of lowest temperate which allows you to combines low temperature and high temperature reactor much more effective
  
• Molten Salt Reactor Core Temperature gains 50% Hot Bath bonus for Power production, allowing it to be as effective as it was
  
• Fixed exceptions when multiple Reactor windows are opened
  
• Fixed Definition Argon in Modular Fuel Tanks to ArgonGas
  
• Updated IFS to 1.17
  

It still has very similar issues with 2 reactors on one thermal generator.... However, it seems kinda logical and maybe you would just want to call it intended behavior, just add a warning. You can see them here, with similar heat levels, and you can see the difference in electrical production, but once again maybe you should just call it a feature and recommend one generator per reactor.

[EnigmaG]

There is a bug in the soot accumulation of thermal engines, at 50% soot accumulation the thrust and the full consumption become 0. Over 50% the full consumption become negative and the engines produces full.

[LastStarDust]

Hello,

Recently I'm having some problems with radiators.

Actually when I loaded this ship equipped with radial radiators the game started lagging terribly, like one frame every five seconds.

This happens only in career mode and only with that ship. In sandbox everything is fine.

This is a picture

This is the Player.log associated

The bug shows up only under this conditions:

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64

KSP: 1.0.4 64bit

KSPI: 1.5.8

Only in career mode

Only with this ship: DUMBO.craft

How I discovered? The ship with radiators lags, without not.

[Northstar1989]

Like always, the numbers are missing or very hard to find and even harder to integrate, but over the months of working on KSPI, I have leaned to respect the numbers cooked up Fractal. They might not be accurate, but they might be game balancing reasons to maintain them. The atmospheric accumulator currenly have a liniear relationship between power and perfornace. The more power you put into it, the more it will produce. Most likely this doesn't scale so well. I can imagine that at a certain point not matter how much power you going to put into it, you aint going to collect more resource and only produce WasteHeat. The high power cost might simply a way to preventing you from reaching this point in the first place. Of cource this goes well untill you start getting very powerfull power systems. Note that the atmospheric concentration I asume to be above the atmosphere are probably way too high. A week ago I spoke with someone from NASA and he told me it requires years to accumulate any signifiant amount of resource this way. And that it's simply cheaper to use conventional methods than to try to collect any resource in space. Of cource he assumed having only acces to power generated from solar power, but still it's something to think about. Noticethat a few release back, I made the accumulator function with any High Isp engine, this allows you to collect resource with antimatter reactor. It would probably a major waste of antimatter, but it would still work.

You're probably right about there being game-balance reasons for not tweaking the power requirements. Plus, you are correct about the currently-assumed concentrations being a little on the high side (although, were you clear about the ALTITUDE of the orbits with the guy from NASA? The ISS orbits at around 420 km, whereas a Propulsive Fluid Accumulator would operate at between 100 and 200 km... At 100 km Earth orbit, your numbers aren't THAT far off- maybe only only 4-5x what they should be...) which is a good enough reason to leave power requirements how they are...

As for the NASA guy talking about the economics, he's talking, mainly, about the cost of developing such a system vs. the benefits received. There is NO QUESTION that the marginal cost of operating such a system is much less than the cost of launching the same mass of propellant to orbit- the problem is developing such a system in the first place would be enormously expensive. And thus, probably not worth it in the current era of only messing around in Low Earth Orbit... The moment you start getting more ambitious and seriously looking at traveling to Mars, Venus, and maybe someday even Ceres or Jupiter, it becomes IMMENSELY more worthwhile to develop such a system, however. It is true that it would take years for a small-scale system to generate a significant amount of propellant- but the beauty is there is no real practical limit to how much you can scale such a system up (with more accumulator cross-sectional area, not more power), and you can use the same technology around other planets for return-propellant (CO2 form Mars orbit fed into electric thrusters, for instance- something already being looked at for very highly-specialized unmanned orbiters that would actually orbit inside Mars' upper atmosphere...)

One last thought- it ALREADY takes game-years to accumulate any significant amount of resource this way, at least if you power it with a conventional fission reactor. Something I discovered all too late with a Duna mission I attempted in-game with Real Solar System a while back. I ended up only being able to collect a small quantity of Nitrogen from orbit after roughly 54 days of Propulsive Fluid Accumulator operation- enough to top off some small auxiliary Nitrogen tanks on a manned mission that were already mostly-full, but nothing more than that. It takes a massively scaled-up PFA, or a lot of time-warp (a couple years at least) and several missed transfer-windows, to accumulate enough Nitrogen (which is by far the most abundant resource around Kerbin) for anything more than a small probe mission...

In real life, they would probably just overcome this obstacle by launching a whole fleet of Propulsive Fluid Accumulators- once you've gone through all the effort of developing the technology for and designing one, launching a few dozen of them doesn't cost that much more (and, at least in the short term, helps make up for the lost profits launch-providers would suffer when we don't have to launch many spacecraft to orbit with more fuel than it takes to reach a propellant depot anymore, and can refuel them before, say, heading to Geosynchronous Orbit...) and it does provide a lot of redundancy in case one broke or got hit by something... In-game, it makes more sense to just leave PFA's with a 4-5x higher collection-rate than they should have (especially when balanced with higher power-requirements than they would have in real life).

It's the same old narrative- a large one time investment (developing usable Propulsive Fluid Accumulators from preliminary designs we already have on the books- not a cheap proposition by any means) for huge long-term rewards (being able to fuel all your probes, and with a large enough PFA fleet, your manned missions, at least partially with gasses collected from Earth Orbit). Something we don't seem too interested in doing anymore, unless you're Space-X...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited September 30, 2015 by Northstar1989

[Cosmonauth]

Hello,

Recently I'm having some problems with radiators.

Actually when I loaded this ship equipped with radial radiators the game started lagging terribly, like one frame every five seconds.

This happens only in career mode and only with that ship. In sandbox everything is fine.

This is a picture

This is the Player.log associated

The bug shows up only under this conditions:

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64

KSP: 1.0.4 64bit

KSPI: 1.5.8

Only in career mode

Only with this ship: DUMBO.craft

How I discovered? The ship with radiators lags, without not.

Yesterday i made a craft in career mode, big one, and it was terrible lags when we launched. I was too tired to figure out, what part produces that lag. Actually I did some research, but I didn't think it was radial radiators.

If it's radial radiators issue, I guess it somehow related to radiator upgrades in career mode. I should do some tests.

[FreeThinker]

There is a bug in the soot accumulation of thermal engines, at 50% soot accumulation the thrust and the full consumption become 0. Over 50% the full consumption become negative and the engines produces full.

Thanks, I will look into it.

- - - Updated - - -

Hello,

Recently I'm having some problems with radiators.

Actually when I loaded this ship equipped with radial radiators the game started lagging terribly, like one frame every five seconds.

This happens only in career mode and only with that ship. In sandbox everything is fine.

This is a picture

This is the Player.log associated

The bug shows up only under this conditions:

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64

KSP: 1.0.4 64bit

KSPI: 1.5.8

Only in career mode

Only with this ship: DUMBO.craft

How I discovered? The ship with radiators lags, without not.

Nice base. I will look if I can somehow improve performance on the generators. The do an awfully lot of calculating, and are in contrast to the reactors, used in large numbers

[Cosmonauth]

well. I can confirm radiators issue:

In career mode, any radiator causes huge FPS drop (tested with foldable, flat and wrap)

In case this is upgrades related, my current state of techtree:

UPD: No signs of FPS drops in Sandbox mode. Tested both (career, sandbox) on simple craft with Thermal Generator+Reactor

Edited September 30, 2015 by Cosmonauth
update