KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[Fireheart318]

11 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Well the gray part is currently only capable of recieving

I understand there some confusion here because it is not instantly clear what is a transmitter and what isn't. Currently only the above model is capable of transmiting (and transieving) all other are recievers, but I plan to change this.

Hopefully I can somehow get acces to a realisitc looking  Laser/Microwave transmitter model which will instantly be recornizable as a trasnmitter, and not something that can do both

Also other phased array models will be configured to act as transsievers, this will make them usefull to act as relays. Note that currenlty the size of the transmitter has no effect on the efficiency of transmission, this will change. Expect to require a Large phased array in a low orbit and for deep speed activities, you require a second transmitter to convert the signal from microwave into urltaviolet.

 

 

The big orange one can't transmit. It gives me the option to deploy panels and deploy panels. Currently, it only acts like a solar panel.

Edit: There are no options other than deploy on the orange one and no options whatsoever on all the other ones

Edited August 4, 2016 by Fireheart318

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

The big orange one can't transmit. It gives me the option to deploy panels and deploy panels. Currently, it only acts like a solar panel.

Edit: There are no options other than deploy on the orange one and no options whatsoever on all the other ones

weird, it's almost as if KSPI isn't installed properly. are any other part functioning, by that I mean do they have a right click menu?

Could you please post a few screenshots?

Edited August 4, 2016 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

There is extreme thermal power efficiency (over 2000%) bug with thermal generator attached to closed gas core reactor:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Edited August 4, 2016 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

There is extreme thermal power efficiency (over 2000%) bug with thermal generator attached to closed gas core reactor:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Lol indeed, because at 100% or above it doesn't produce any wasteheat, it never degrades in power. It's like a self sustaining chain reaction. Good find

Edited August 4, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Fireheart318]

8 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

weird, it's almost as if KSPI isn't installed properly. are any other part functioning, by that I mean do they have a right click menu?

Could you please post a few screenshots?

 

They DO have a right click menu. I'll get a few screenshots and a copy of the code just in case

[Fairin]

gah! the first rule of closed cycle gas core club is to not talk about closed cycle gas core club.

Edited August 4, 2016 by Fairin

[Fireheart318]

Here's a sat I put in orbit using Hyperedit to test everything at once. I have 8 Gigantor solar arrays, which is more than enough for my purposes and one of each transmitter including legacies. As you can see, NOTHING WORKS!

Code: http://pastebin.com/TNbezdBf

Screenshots

Edited August 4, 2016 by Fireheart318

[FreeThinker]

29 minutes ago, Fireheart318 said:

Here's a sat I put in orbit using Hyperedit to test everything at once. I have 8 Gigantor solar arrays, which is more than enough for my purposes and one of each transmitter including legacies. As you can see, NOTHING WORKS!

Code: http://pastebin.com/TNbezdBf

Screenshots

Alright, it's clear to me something must have gone wrong durring installation and it's impossible for me to determn what. Therefore I would advice to make a seperate fresh KSP installion, extract the entire KSPI -E zip into your KSP folder or use CKAN. then it should work

Edited August 4, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Fireheart318]

Just now, FreeThinker said:

Alright, it's clear to me something must have gone wrong durring installting, I would advice to make a seperate fresh KSP installion, extract the entire KSPI -E zip into your KSP folder or use CKAN. then it should work

 

MULTIPLE TIMES!? Do I really need that annoying toolbar and RCS sounds?

[Nansuchao]

1 hour ago, Fireheart318 said:

MULTIPLE TIMES!? Do I really need that annoying toolbar and RCS sounds?

The Toolbar is necessary for a correct installation. If not installed, you'll have many things going wrong.

You can not install RCS sound btw.

[raxo2222]

1 hour ago, Fireheart318 said:

MULTIPLE TIMES!? Do I really need that annoying toolbar and RCS sounds?

Do you realize you can move toolbar somewhere in game?

It doesn't have to be in middle like by default.

[FreeThinker]

On 4-8-2016 at 10:33 AM, raxo2222 said:

There is extreme thermal power efficiency (over 2000%) bug with thermal generator attached to closed gas core reactor:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Alright, I found the problem. The reason was that the reactor efficiency for thermal power modifier was set to 40 instead of 0.4, which made it effectively 100 more effective as it should be. Not only that it's efficency higher than 100% actualy made it absorb wasteheat instead of creating it. making it function like a super colling, allewing engines like the Quantume vacuum thrust to operate without any overheating.

Edit: What is astonishing is that this bug has been there since the moment I introduced the variable, but no one ever reported it.

Edited August 5, 2016 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

14 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Alright, I found the problem. The reason was that the reactor efficiency for thermal power modifier was set to 40 instead of 0.4, which made it effectively 100 more effective as it should be.

EDit: What is astonishing is that this bug has been there since the moment I introduced the variable, but no one ever reported it.

No one reports good bad bugs and fun exploits apparently.

 

[Fireheart318]

3 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

Do you realize you can move toolbar somewhere in game?

It doesn't have to be in middle like by default.

 

I've tried!

[Nansuchao]

2 minutes ago, Fireheart318 said:

I've tried!

- Left click on the little white arrov of the Toolbar, you'll se a menu with the command "Unlock posizion and size".

- Click it, draw the toolbar when you like

- Reclick the command, that now is "Lock Position and Size"

- ????

- Profit

[Fireheart318]

Half the parts stop the game from loading. I don't know why. PLEASE HELP I JUST WANT BEAMED POWER!

[Fairin]

4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Alright, I found the problem. The reason was that the reactor efficiency for thermal power modifier was set to 40 instead of 0.4, which made it effectively 100 more effective as it should be.

Edit: What is astonishing is that this bug has been there since the moment I introduced the variable, but no one ever reported it.

the second rule of closed cycle gas core club is to not talk about closed cycle gas core club! >< yer gonna make me have to figure out how to make fusion power give power, or farm antimatter! or maybe just stack more molten salts in spaaaaaaace.

[MonoLyth]

FreeThinker sir can we please have a warp drive that will decelerate the vessel to stable orbit velocity of closest major stellar object pretty please? While I love what you have done with the warp drive in it's current state, for us mere mortals of stellar travel, calculating velocity with respect to our current object vs target requires a fair bit of processing power on the fly.

[Undecided]

I've noticed that Hydrogen Peroxide has a near-identical ISP and thrust to Hydrazine. Given that hydrogen peroxide requires fewer steps to manufacture, and requires fewer resources (hydrazine also needs ammonia). Is there any real reason to use hydrazine over hydrogen peroxide?

The only thing I can think of is that hydrazine gives you the additional water back, but even that benefit seems questionable given the additional effort required to go out and harvest ammonia for the hydrazine reaction.

(Also, speaking of reactions, could you consider adding product ratios for the various ISRU processes in either the in-game tooltip or the github wiki? It would be really helpful for long-term planning if players knew how much of each product they could expect so they could choose storage tank layouts accordingly.)

Edited August 6, 2016 by Undecided

[Northstar1989]

10 hours ago, Undecided said:

I've noticed that Hydrogen Peroxide has a near-identical ISP and thrust to Hydrazine. Given that hydrogen peroxide requires fewer steps to manufacture, and requires fewer resources (hydrazine also needs ammonia). Is there any real reason to use hydrazine over hydrogen peroxide?

The only thing I can think of is that hydrazine gives you the additional water back, but even that benefit seems questionable given the additional effort required to go out and harvest ammonia for the hydrazine reaction.

(Also, speaking of reactions, could you consider adding product ratios for the various ISRU processes in either the in-game tooltip or the github wiki? It would be really helpful for long-term planning if players knew how much of each product they could expect so they could choose storage tank layouts accordingly.)

There's a lot that needs to be done with ISRU.  Making a better manual on it, for one (which could probably even be made available in-game, much like Kerbal Inventory System's manual).  Explaining product ratios in-game is just one thing that needs to be done...

I've been AWOL for a while, I know- but if all goes well with my medical school applications and finding work/employment in Boston for the meantime, I'll probably pick KSP back up in earnest in a few months, and become somewhat active in KSP-Interstellar Extended's dev team again...

I promise that ISRU will be one of the first things I revisit when I'm all caught up in that situation.  After all, a strong desire to maintain/preserve and expand upon the original KSP Interstellar ISRU system was a big part of the reason I joined with @FreeThinker to found this branch of KSP Interstellar in the first place, to expand the awesome mod @Fractal_UK built long ago...  We may have started by introducing Propulsive Fluid Accumulators to KSP-Interstellar and working at improving the Atmospheric Scoops, but it was always my intention we'd revisit and improve upon the ground-based ISRU system eventually as well...

 

As for Hydrogen Peroxide vs. Hydrazine, H2O2 is generally a superior propellant.  It's about 40% denser than Hydrazine when stored in pure form, it is (much, much) less toxic than Hydrazine, its molecular mass is similar (which means it achieves similar ISP in an MPD thruster), and it is easier to manufacture in ISRU.  However it is a strongly oxidizing chemical and quite corrosive (Hydrazine, by comparison, is often used to PROTECT against corrosion and to scavenge oxygen radicals...), which means it can't be safely used in some engines such as many arcjets and some types of nuclear thermal rocket (you'd need special coatings for an NTR, although we abstract this in the mod by allowing many such propellants to be used anyways and assuming use of the proper coatings...)  H2O2 also is an inferior Nuclear Thermal Rocket propellant to Hydrazine when utilizing a reactor that operates at very high temperatures- as it only produces 1.5 molecules of gas (H2O and half an O2) per molecule of H2O2 when passed over a hot reactor as opposed to Hydrazine's three.  This means the extra thrust it produces scales much less quickly with temperature than does Hydrazine's, and in a sufficiently hot Nuclear Thermal Rocket the reduced thrust and ISP compared to Hydrazine more than outweighs the higher density or easier ISRU...

I'm not sure how much of this is currently reflected in the mod (the inability to use H2O2 in arcjets, or the reduced gains from thermal decomposition of the propellant at high temperatures compared to Hydrazine- the balancing if the thermally decomposing propellants in particular are still a bit wacky...) but these are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each propellant in real life.  And all of them are relevant in KSP- for instance the restriction on using H2O2 in arcjets...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited August 6, 2016 by Northstar1989

[FreeThinker]

17 hours ago, MonoLyth said:

FreeThinker sir can we please have a warp drive that will decelerate the vessel to stable orbit velocity of closest major stellar object pretty please? While I love what you have done with the warp drive in it's current state, for us mere mortals of stellar travel, calculating velocity with respect to our current object vs target requires a fair bit of processing power on the fly.

Well I would like to do something like this using warp field buoy, the idea is that if you manage to warp out of  warp at a certain distance from the buoy, you match your speed and direction with the buoy. Still in order to put the Buoy in the corrrect orbit, you need to slow down using conventional means.

Edited August 6, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Undecided]

11 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

There's a lot that needs to be done with ISRU.  Making a better manual on it, for one (which could probably even be made available in-game, much like Kerbal Inventory System's manual).  Explaining product ratios in-game is just one thing that needs to be done...

I've been AWOL for a while, I know- but if all goes well with my medical school applications and finding work/employment in Boston for the meantime, I'll probably pick KSP back up in earnest in a few months, and become somewhat active in KSP-Interstellar Extended's dev team again...

I promise that ISRU will be one of the first things I revisit when I'm all caught up in that situation.  After all, a strong desire to maintain/preserve and expand upon the original KSP Interstellar ISRU system was a big part of the reason I joined with @FreeThinker to found this branch of KSP Interstellar in the first place, to expand the awesome mod @Fractal_UK built long ago...  We may have started by introducing Propulsive Fluid Accumulators to KSP-Interstellar and working at improving the Atmospheric Scoops, but it was always my intention we'd revisit and improve upon the ground-based ISRU system eventually as well...

In the mean time, any chemists around here able to slap on some ballpark figures on the wiki? Even simplified ballpark figures like 

[100 units of H2O] -> [12400 units of H2] + [6200 units of O2]

would be far better than the current zero information, which leaves most of us non-chemists totally blind as to how much produce to expect from ISRU reactions. Even the vanilla ISRU has basic input/output ratios on what each process makes. 

[MonoLyth]

7 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Well I would like to do something like this using warp field buoy, the idea is that if you manage to warp out of  warp at a certain distance from the buoy, you match your speed and direction with the buoy. Still in order to put the Buoy in the corrrect orbit, you need to slow down using conventional means.

Sounds like a good starting point. Would it be possible to then get an advanced version that can operate like it's own warp buoy and when it drops out of warp it matches orbit velocity with target relative to distance?

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, MonoLyth said:

Sounds like a good starting point. Would it be possible to then get an advanced version that can operate like it's own warp buoy and when it drops out of warp it matches orbit velocity with target relative to distance?

Perhaps. The Problem is not whether I want it or not (I do). The problem is implementing it in unity. If you realy want this feature and want to investigate on how to achieve it there is nothing stopping you from implementing it yourself.

[FreeThinker]

19 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

As for Hydrogen Peroxide vs. Hydrazine, H2O2 is generally a superior propellant.  It's about 40% denser than Hydrazine when stored in pure form, it is (much, much) less toxic than Hydrazine, its molecular mass is similar (which means it achieves similar ISP in an MPD thruster), and it is easier to manufacture in ISRU.  However it is a strongly oxidizing chemical and quite corrosive (Hydrazine, by comparison, is often used to PROTECT against corrosion and to scavenge oxygen radicals...), which means it can't be safely used in some engines such as many arcjets and some types of nuclear thermal rocket (you'd need special coatings for an NTR, although we abstract this in the mod by allowing many such propellants to be used anyways and assuming use of the proper coatings...)  H2O2 also is an inferior Nuclear Thermal Rocket propellant to Hydrazine when utilizing a reactor that operates at very high temperatures- as it only produces 1.5 molecules of gas (H2O and half an O2) per molecule of H2O2 when passed over a hot reactor as opposed to Hydrazine's three.  This means the extra thrust it produces scales much less quickly with temperature than does Hydrazine's, and in a sufficiently hot Nuclear Thermal Rocket the reduced thrust and ISP compared to Hydrazine more than outweighs the higher density or easier ISRU...

I'm not sure how much of this is currently reflected in the mod (the inability to use H2O2 in arcjets, or the reduced gains from thermal decomposition of the propellant at high temperatures compared to Hydrazine- the balancing if the thermally decomposing propellants in particular are still a bit wacky...) but these are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each propellant in real life.  And all of them are relevant in KSP- for instance the restriction on using H2O2 in arcjets...

 

Interesting, I checked and it appears I had wrongly given HTP almost the same characteristics as Hydrazine. For next patch I will remove HTP ability to be used with Arcjets and reduce thrust bonus by half.