KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[DoubleUU]

There seems to be an issue with some of the parts being attached to a cone shaped procedural tank and then resized.  I'm using the trialpha in this example but it also happens with other reactors and generators.  I've created what I think is the simplest possible example with steps to recreate.  In the VAB I added an RC-L01, then a procedural tank (default shape is cylinder so I changed it to cone and changed the texture to make the part delineation more visible), the trialpha and then another tank:

If I leave the trialpha in it's default 2.5m size everything works ok.  If I resize it down to 1.875m or smaller, then the below clipping happens after saving and reloading the craft (also had instances where gaps would appear between the parts instead of them merging):

This only seems to happen with Interstellar parts.  I tried recreating the behavior using various stock parts as well as parts from other mods.  This also happens when the craft is reloaded after switching control to another vessel if it's already in flight.  Is this something I'm doing wrong?

P.S.  If I add a part between the tank and the trialpha it seems to also correct the problem, like this works:

Edited March 7, 2017 by DoubleUU
Clarity and additional information

[FreeThinker]

@DoubleUU This seems more like a incompatibility between tweakscale and procedural parts.

[Popetastic]

10 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

@Popetastic What about your beamed power transmitter, where is it located?, how much power does it transmit in what wavelength?

For the purposes of the test I've got a generator with 2 Tokamaks and I've also tried it with 2 Stellerators and a FELA transmitter. I've tried to use microwaves and infared and made sure that the transmitter is at the right wavelength, I've also tried other transmitters.. It is sitting on the runway while I'm launching the vehicle at the launch site. It transmits something like 400MW that shows up on the thermal receiver when I right click on it. I've tried with NFE installed and uninstalled. I've tried with and without radiators in case that had something to do with it.  Also, I can use that power to run a thermal electric generator so I know it's getting power...it's just that the engine isn't getting any fuel. 

 

[DoubleUU]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

@DoubleUU This seems more like a incompatibility between tweakscale and procedural parts.

Ok.  I will do some more tests and then post over there if I can narrow it down further.  So far I have not been able to replicate this behavior with any parts other than yours so I'm thinking if I post there they'll send me right back here if I don't have any more information.  I'll be able to do some more testing tomorrow.

Edited March 8, 2017 by DoubleUU

[kermand]

Hi.

First, thanks for all the good work on ksp interstellar extended. This mod is awesome, you're awesome.

 

I am currently struggling with designing ISRU solutions for refueling my ships. I found a lot of information on the kspi-e wiki and was able to design a chemical plant processing regolith up to hydrazine. But i did not found any information about the various raw materials available and what one can expect to extract from them using the ISRU processor.

for exemple, let's say i go all the way to recolt a lot of solar wind, or monazite, or hydrates, borates, etc... What can i expect to obtain from processing it ? I could figure out about regolith because you can create a tanlk full of regolith in the VAB, so it is possible to quickly buid a prototype plant and make sure it works on Kerbin, then send it to some other place and enjoy. But AFAIK tanks of hydrates/monazite/solar wind are not available in the VAB so i can't experiment on them as easily.

Of course, i could launch a mission to near kerbol, collect solar wind and then try to figure out what can be done with it by trial and error. In fact, I was planning to do just that, but it requires hours of gameplay i 'd rather spend using moar nuclear engines to accelerate moar bigger spaceships, and I figured I might as well ask directly here.

Kspi-e's gameplay is so deep... I have just too many other questions for one post.

[FreeThinker]

Version 1.12.11 for Kerbal Space Program 1.2.2

Released on 2017-03-09

• Added Dynamic ElectricCHarge buffer to Cryostorage, preventing boiloff at high timewarp due to electricCharge power underrun

[brygun]

woo!

[brygun]

Ran my test flight and went okay.

 

Its an orbital probe with a few solar to charge its few batteries and moderate capacitors there for the communication of science power needs. Next was a cryo engine and tanks managed well with those electrical sources. Around that was a radial set of cryo tanks feeding that inner core, each with some electrical resources. Launched in the early night with only minor losses getting to orbit on the dark side of Earth. High time warps used to leave the Earth SOI and the transfer burn to Uranus. Did see the EC buffer boosting the electrical charge with minor fluxes in the number but never in below 90%. The method used makes it feasible and dV profitable to use Cryo tanks. 

 

Thanks for good work!

 

PS:

I did find one useful design tip was to have slightly more batteries than the EC of the chosen capacitor. Then during dark times manually triggers a capacitor one at a time as needed. The slightly more meant there was power left for probe control.

 

The worst cause situation for my profile above was launching on the dark side of a planet so no EC from solar panels.

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by brygun

[DoubleUU]

On 3/7/2017 at 4:17 PM, DoubleUU said:

Ok.  I will do some more tests and then post over there if I can narrow it down further.  So far I have not been able to replicate this behavior with any parts other than yours so I'm thinking if I post there they'll send me right back here if I don't have any more information.  I'll be able to do some more testing tomorrow.

Quoting myself...  bad form!  Anyway, I did some more tests and discovered that this is happening on more parts.  It was my testing method that was flawed.  Therefore I've moved the topic to procedural parts for now since I think that's where the problem lies.

Edited March 9, 2017 by DoubleUU
Typo

[brygun]

Feature request:

Could we have an option to drop out of time warp on boil off. Im imagining this as switchable so we could let it go through or stop. If further possible to set it so that we can select the time warp limit on boil off. Some ships might intend to cruise with boil off happening but most might want to stop to trip capacitors.

Reason: I had one flight on a high time warp that was okay then suddenly was not. Happened so fast that by the time I noticed the power and all lqdH was gone. This was a solar panel only ship so Im expected some random incident of entering a shadow or pivoting into its own shadow. Unlikely as it has 4 of the unfold circular panels on radial mount. Not impossible. I restored to a recent save and ran things slightly different actually trying to spot the time of power loss but didn't see it occur so I can't give an exact cause. Also this repeat didnt suffer that boil off so the mission is a go again.

[FreeThinker]

10 hours ago, brygun said:

I did find one useful design tip was to have slightly more batteries than the EC of the chosen capacitor. Then during dark times manually triggers a capacitor one at a time as needed. The slightly more meant there was power left for probe control.

Have you tried the new IFS Super capacitators? You no longer need any triggers, you only have to set it at about 50% and the power level will charge and discharged automatically! It effectively increases to storage capacity of your normal batteries at the expanse of power loss over long time. But a single 2.5 M super capacitator stores up to 90 MW, which converts up to 90000 Electric Charge!. It should therefore be ideal to survive the dark side of  a celestial object or vessel maneuver

Edited March 9, 2017 by FreeThinker

[brygun]

That doesn't sound familiar to me. My main game play has a community tech tree plus engineering aspects applied so perhaps I haven't unlocked it.

 

Can you name the specific part you mean and I can look for it in a sandbox game play mode?

So, part of the answer is no, I don't seem to be using that part.

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, brygun said:

That doesn't sound familiar to me. My main game play has a community tech tree plus engineering aspects applied so perhaps I haven't unlocked it.

 

Can you name the specific part you mean and I can look for it in a sandbox game play mode?

So, part of the answer is no, I don't seem to be using that part.

As I said,  it is called the "IFS Super Capacitor" which It's part of IFS part set

[FreeThinker]

On Monday, March 06, 2017 at 8:20 PM, Iso-Polaris said:

Daedalus Engine do not have a plume. 

Is this suppose to happen?

At timewarp non of the engines have any plume

[Popetastic]

I had a problem a page or two back where my engines attached to a thermal receiver wouldn't use any fuel. I was doing the tests in sandbox mode but when I tried in my career save, it worked fine. No idea what difference that could make, though.

Anyway, I have some more beam power questions. How do you tell what the benefits and disadvantages of using different beam generator types and wavelengths are? My understanding is that beams start out high efficiency and short range at microwave wavelengths and continually get longer range and less efficient as you move toward ultraviolet. I think atmospheric absorption follows (mostly) the same curve. In that case, where do diode lasers and gyrotrons factor in? I'm assuming that microwave, infrared, and ultraviolet generators fit neatly into the above spectrum. I'm also not entirely clear on the relationship between range and efficiency, or how you can figure out what the range is in the first place. If you have an ultraviolet generator with an efficiency of 10% does that mean that you start out with 10% of your total power regardless of range and steadily decrease as you get further away, or that your beam is at 10% efficiency once you hit max range? When you exceed your max range, does the beam start to lose efficiency faster or stop working entirely?

So, my questions are, what's the difference between a diode laser and a gyrotron beam and regular microwave or ultraviolet beam generator? Why would I want to use one over the other? What's the point, for example, of using a diode laser to produce a near infrared or visible red as opposed to using a free electron laser to produce the same beam? How do I tell how far my beams go based on the wavelength numbers? To be a bit more practical, which beam type would I want to use on a solar power station in low orbit over the sun to hook it up with my other relays? What beam type would I use for power stations in LKO for interplanetary burns, or stations on the ground for launching, or larger orbital stations to send power out to Jool?

[Sweetie bot]

I have a question that should be explained when i make a manual , it's About Time,   What factors limit the life expectancy of the reactor？

  Since almost reactor have their life cycle, I wonder how the life expectancy time base on?  It base on real life time(24h)，or has been scaling down to kerbin time scale? Or it have a real life time but show in kerbals time unit? 

 

MCF are soo weak and it lose half power for 3 earth year...

Edited March 20, 2017 by Sweetie bot
still waiting for ans........

[selord]

hi all,
thank freethinker for this truly amazing mods I've already spent more than I'm willing to assume hours enjoying it in carrer mode =)

I'm a bit confused now as I try to extract uranium now. Where can i find the ISRU refinery ? I've spent hours researching this on the web and in the mod files All I can find is the All in one ISRU refining (and the other ISRU processing* units) with the uranium part commented (and I wasn't really succesful at uncommenting them). I also found what I believed WAS the original refinerry, but it's now in an "unresearchable" tech tree and it's labelled as obsolete

I was trying to change the mun into a big nuclear plant for my beam power grid, and I'm kind of stuck now

Can you help ? (or just point to a similar thread I missed (even though I've been through quit a lot of them already )



* not mining

[Apostrophe]

Here's a simple warp-capable craft that I've built to illustrate a texture issue I've been having.

The warp effect has its usual blue/violet color, and the transparencies fluctuate as they should, but once every cycle, each color flashes a bright white.

I'm running KSPI version 1.11.4, so this isn't a current glitch. (EDIT: yes it is. I updated everything, and this still happens. I wonder if it has something to do with the PersistentRotation mod, it also seems to have the occasional texture issue.) I'm having a hard time finding references to this specific "flash-glitch" anywhere. I've tried checking the warp texture files, combining various elements of other Interstellar versions with this one, and I've even tried a clean reinstall of the entire mod. Nothing changes. I've also played around with my graphics settings, to no avail.

I describe the problem in more detail in my original post (sorry, I only just realized that this might be a good place to post as well)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/157574-ksp-interstellar-warp-effect-glitch/

Has anyone else had this happen to them lately? The other (extremely rare) references to this that I've found refer to a solid white beam (such as the one in the second pic), but that remains solid. Mine flashes, as shown, and I seem to be the only one to whom this is happening...surely not, right?

Any hints or tips on how to resolve this would be quite welcome.  

Edited March 11, 2017 by Apostrophe

[proteasome]

On 3/10/2017 at 9:11 PM, Popetastic said:

How do you tell what the benefits and disadvantages of using different beam generator types and wavelengths are? My understanding is that beams start out high efficiency and short range at microwave wavelengths and continually get longer range and less efficient as you move toward ultraviolet. I think atmospheric absorption follows (mostly) the same curve. In that case, where do diode lasers and gyrotrons factor in? I'm assuming that microwave, infrared, and ultraviolet generators fit neatly into the above spectrum. I'm also not entirely clear on the relationship between range and efficiency, or how you can figure out what the range is in the first place. If you have an ultraviolet generator with an efficiency of 10% does that mean that you start out with 10% of your total power regardless of range and steadily decrease as you get further away, or that your beam is at 10% efficiency once you hit max range? When you exceed your max range, does the beam start to lose efficiency faster or stop working entirely?

So, my questions are, what's the difference between a diode laser and a gyrotron beam and regular microwave or ultraviolet beam generator? Why would I want to use one over the other? What's the point, for example, of using a diode laser to produce a near infrared or visible red as opposed to using a free electron laser to produce the same beam? How do I tell how far my beams go based on the wavelength numbers? To be a bit more practical, which beam type would I want to use on a solar power station in low orbit over the sun to hook it up with my other relays? What beam type would I use for power stations in LKO for interplanetary burns, or stations on the ground for launching, or larger orbital stations to send power out to Jool?

I can't answer all your questions, but I can tell you about my experience with microwaves vs laser IR. I haven't yet used ultraviolet extensively, but I've heard it's best for beaming large amounts of power over great distances in space.

***For the optimal configuration of your transmitters, what to use as relays, etc, look at the KSPedia entry for KSP Interstellar Extended in the game.

The first network I built was microwave, because that's what I had used in previous KSPI releases. With the new introduction of different wavelengths, it looks like the mod is now more realistic in how it treats distance and atmospheric scattering across the spectrum. @FreeThinker has posted a plot of Wavelength vs Absorption that the game uses in these threads a few times. The takeaway is that if you want to beam lots of power in the atmosphere, you need to use microwave or laser far-IR. Of these two, microwave might seem somewhat easier to do because of the diversity and capacity of the parts, but it has a big limitation, which is that it looses power very rapidly with distance. A laser-based far-IR setup works better if you want flexibility in being able to capture larger amounts of power over greater distances (or if you're using real solar system scale). Some of the mod's thermal receivers can accept power from any beamed wavelength source, of course factoring in the usual path and atmospheric losses, so it's fine to have complimentary networks. Just be aware that things might get tricky if you try to relay or transmit multiple wavelengths simultaneously on a single satellite. 

To sum up my main thoughts:

- For Atmospheric launches over short relay distances, use Microwave or Laser far-IR

- If you need larger path lengths (for instance because of relays) and atmospheric penetration, user far-IR.

- For interplanetary distances use UV. 

- Beam types can be converted on a relay station that contains two dishes and a beam generator, with some loss occurring depending on the scale and optimal wavelengths of the dishes..

- The most efficient relays use one of the pivoted mirrors because the power doesn't have to travel through the spacecraft or a converter of any sort. Getting your relay in orbit is also a lot easier when you're only trying to orbit one large dish, instead of two. I found this to be a major point in favor of far-IR when setting up my home planet system.

[Popetastic]

Thanks for the reply, that helps a lot. I've fiddled around a bit and I think that the beam generators types (diode laser, gyrotron, etc) don't effect anything other than what wavelengths you can create. I'm also thinking it'd be a lot easier to build a power station around Jool and use that to relay power to the moons rather than beaming it all from Kerbin since it's hard to tell how far my beams can go and what happens when they arrive. I have a few more questions now, though.  Is it possible to beam thermal power directly or does it always need to be converted to electricity first? And about the relays, if you use one of the mirrors do you need any other parts on the ship other than a probe core, battery, etc?

[proteasome]

1 hour ago, Popetastic said:

Is it possible to beam thermal power directly or does it always need to be converted to electricity first? And about the relays, if you use one of the mirrors do you need any other parts on the ship other than a probe core, battery, etc?

I'm still unclear, personally, if there's a true difference btwn beamed thermal vs electrical. Some of the recievers can use either mode, but I think this is just for electric vs thermal engines. I don't think you can use a transmitter setup that didn't use either integrated generators (a few reactors have them) or external ones. Unless I'm misreading the KSPedia page which shows all transmitters requiring megajoules. 

As for a mirror relay, you shouldn't need a beam generator or a second dish. The only thing else you need is some source of power, since the relay won't both receive and transmit. Solar power should be ok, unless you need MJ for a computer core. 

Hope none of that is wrong, I'm still figuring out all the details of this amazing mod.

 

[Iso-Polaris]

On 2017/3/11 at 4:41 AM, FreeThinker said:

At timewarp non of the engines have any plume

It has no plume in 1.0x physics time

[Nansuchao]

1 hour ago, Iso-Polaris said:

It has no plume in 1.0x physics time

Are you powering it with a lot of energy? Or just a little?

[FreeThinker]

Version 1.12.12 for Kerbal Space Program 1.2.2

Released on 2017-03-12

• Added KSPI Atmospheric Analyzer to Stock Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer
• Added ability to process Uraninite to EnrichedUranium and MonoziteTo Thorium
• Added Ability to Manufacture UF4 from EnrichedUranium and ThF4 from Thorium (Both require LqdFluorite)
• Added Graphene Truss Radiator (Requires Near Future Solar)
• Added Blanket Photovoltaic Panel optimized for Beamed Power in Near Infrared (Requires Near Future Solar)
• Fixed Solar Panel Near Infrared Receive of all Solar Panels: Slightly lowered Near Infrared transmit frequency and increased Solar Panels Near Infrared Bandwidth, allowing the to maximized efficiency
• Fixed several error messages in log at startup
• Removed obsolete part files

Edited March 12, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Djohaal]

So on my latest beamed power station I noticed only one-fourth of the effective juice is being turned into power, as expected from the efficiency ratings. Now the question is, where does the rest of the power go? Shouldn't that also be dissipated by radiators, or is that already taken into account.

Also I reiterate my commentary that radiators don't seem to trigger glow animations when radiating KSPI-e heat, only vanilla heat (somehow)