KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[SpaceX]

1 minute ago, FreeThinker said:

Lol, that method of Deuterium mining is quite out dated. The new method involves pumping IntakeLqd with a mining drill or air intake and convert it to all it usefull resources at the ISRU Processor, which depend on it celestrial body. All ISRU processes have an offline processing functionality which will effectively be processed the first time you focus back on the vessel.

That makes much more sense.. I was just reading about it on the wiki, and figured I'd give it a shot. I take it, by that extension, that will likely not be addressed then?

[FreeThinker]

3 minutes ago, SpaceX said:

That makes much more sense.. I was just reading about it on the wiki, and figured I'd give it a shot. I take it, by that extension, that will likely not be addressed then?

Its not a priority, no, perhaps I should disable this ability altogether. but I will leave it for now, just in case someone relays on it.

Edited April 15, 2017 by FreeThinker

[ToastyOats]

I am having a helluva time discerning KSPI-E Resources

 

Specifically the MegaJoules resource, how am I to interpret their use when trying to figure out how much power I can feed to Electrical Engines like the VASMIRs & ATILLA

Or do neither of them utilize it? I was hoping 1000EC = a MW?

Or is it more like 100EC= 1 KW so you would effectively need a bank of like 10000EC to feed an Electrical Engine even marginally well, I utilize OPT heavily in my gameplay, and I'm attempting to understand the electrical systems of KSPI-E better in order to utilize things like the warp drive & electrical engines for interplanetary travel.

[Vanamonde]

Your post has been merged into the home thread for this mod, @mrgreco. 

[DGerry]

21 minutes ago, ToastyOats said:

I am having a helluva time discerning KSPI-E Resources

 

Specifically the MegaJoules resource, how am I to interpret their use when trying to figure out how much power I can feed to Electrical Engines like the VASMIRs & ATILLA

Or do neither of them utilize it? I was hoping 1000EC = a MW?

Or is it more like 100EC= 1 KW so you would effectively need a bank of like 10000EC to feed an Electrical Engine even marginally well, I utilize OPT heavily in my gameplay, and I'm attempting to understand the electrical systems of KSPI-E better in order to utilize things like the warp drive & electrical engines for interplanetary travel.

 

KSPI's "electrical" engines run off of KSPI MegaJoules.  1MW=1000EC/s, but that conversion only happens from MW to EC and not the other way around unless you include a capacitor or computer core.  The electrical engines like the Vasimr or the MPD use MegaJoules, and MegaJoules come from generators.  Generators take Thermal Power joules or Charged Particle joulesand turn them into MegaJoules at varying levels of efficiency depending on a whole host of factors - Reactors, with a couple of exceptions, all create either Thermal Power joules or Charged Particle joules.  So, to run an electrical engine you need to combine a reactor, which generates Thermal and/or Charged Particle joules, with a generator which can convert Thermal and/or Charged Particle joules into MegaJoules - the electrical engine will then use those MegaJoules to power itself.

[DGerry]

I haven't looked into it much yet but it appears that KSPI ISRU "background" processing may be bugged -  It seems like it's using up the materials without producing anything?  After ~50days, my processor has used up about 100,000 Hydrates but essentially has zero CO2 in storage.  Near as I can tell it didn't make any water either but the processing going on with MKS may be affecting that.  I'll look into it some more soon and see if I can get anything specific.

[DGerry]

So I've been noticing lately that my infrared power network doesn't have as much power as it should.  When I deployed this craft it was normal, outputting the amount of power it should.  Now it looks like this - note that it says active 100%, but the actual thermal power output is almost nonexistant?  There's more than enough radiators on there, it's not an issue of overheating as far as I can tell.  The craft hasn't been deployed for that long.  I'm not saying this is a bug, but I've never had anything like this happen before so I'm not sure if it's some kind of intended behavior I've never encountered in the past or if it *is* a bug.

 

 

Edit:  It's related to the actinides - I thought the advantage of using Uranium over Thorium was that you didn't have to worry about actinide "poisoning"?  Moreover, only a VERY small portion of the actinide storage had been used by that point yet the reactor's output was down to ~12%, which seems extreme regardless.  Dumping the actinides via TAC Fuel Balancer caused the output to jump immediately up to the normal value.

 

Edit two:  So this came down to a matter of my not understanding the mechanics at play.  Peeked into the code to find that actinides poisoning is based on total fuel mass, and since I underfueled the reactor to save weight/cost(since I can refuel it whenever I want), it only took a small amount of actinides to drop power output substantially.  This problem can be solved easily by having on-line processing via an ISRU attached to the vessel.

Edited April 16, 2017 by DGerry
Correction and clarification

[raxo2222]

Where can I store water/heavy water?

 

Edited April 16, 2017 by raxo2222

[SpaceMouse]

On 4/13/2017 at 1:10 AM, Profit- said:

I had the same issue, for some reason it went away after a reload. No idea why.  You will see my ship with the tiny radiators in space that now has massive city block sized radiators.. then they just went back down to size for no reason after a reload. 

I had this issue as well. Removing and placing the radiators back on fixed it. I imagine it might be a issue if its already in space though.

[PhilM]

Is it intentional that the atmospheric scoops are able to pull in resources in space just outside the atmosphere but the refrigeration units are not?

[FreeThinker]

Version 1.12.23 for Kerbal Space Program 1.2.2

Released on 2017-04-17

• Added Unused thermal power for reactors is now turned into wasteheat
• Added power injected for beamed power is now managed, meaning unused power will not generate wasteheat
• Added Ability of Oversized Thermal Dish receiver to receive thermal power from the sun, and optionally convert it directly into electric power
• Balance: Allow vista to be scaled to 2.5m with higher tech nodes unlocked
• Fixed Refrigerator parts can now properly convert Gas into Liquid and the other way around
• Fixed Thermal receivers that can also act as radiator to show correct visible deployment state

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, PhilM said:

Is it intentional that the atmospheric scoops are able to pull in resources in space just outside the atmosphere but the refrigeration units are not?

The refrigerator benefit from Air intakes, it allows them to collect more air in higher atmospheres and just above the atmospheres

16 hours ago, DGerry said:

 Dumping the actinides via TAC Fuel Balancer caused the output to jump immediately up to the normal value.

This is technically a cheat, you are not supposed to be able to do that. The Legit way would be to use fuel reprocessing which would either remove the anticides or replace them with fresh uranium

Edited April 16, 2017 by FreeThinker

[DGerry]

8 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

This is technically a cheat, you are not supposed to be able to do that. The Legit way would be to use fuel reprocessing which would either remove the anticides or replace them with fresh uranium

Yeah, I understand that - I did that as a quick way to test if it was the actinides, which I had initially not suspected because there wasn't that much compared to the total capacity BUT I hadn't considered how little fuel I loaded the reactor with.  Everything is resolved now, it was a matter of my own misunderstanding.

[DGerry]

So I think the latest update has messed up receivers somehow?  I've tested with a couple but for reference, a dual-mode thermal/rectenna receiver operating in electric mode receiving power in the long infrared from my beamed power network is exhibiting super strange behavior.  When I activate the receiver it shows the available power in the network properly, but the "power produced" just goes up and up, and the KSPI info windows show the "theoretical maximum" megajoules continuing to go up.  The network can provide about 175GW but the number immediately shot up above 1000GW and continued to climb, I reverted the scene when it hit 10,000GW.  I figure it definitely shouldn't be doing that, lol.

[FreeThinker]

Version 1.12.24 for Kerbal Space Program 1.2.2

Released on 2017-04-17

• Hotfix: Fixes Beamed Power receivers from receiving increasing amount of power

[DGerry]

ISRU Regolith Process reports "insufficient power" regardless of how much power is available - the refinery window shows 0/40MW despite there being a maximum potential of over 700MW available on the craft.  Tested this with multiple varieties of ISRU to make sure it wasn't one specific part.  This is when using the Magnetized Target reactor with a thermal generator.

Edited April 17, 2017 by DGerry

[FreeThinker]

45 minutes ago, DGerry said:

ISRU Regolith Process reports "insufficient power" regardless of how much power is available - the refinery window shows 0/40MW despite there being a maximum potential of over 700MW available on the craft.  Tested this with multiple varieties of ISRU to make sure it wasn't one specific part.  This is when using the Magnetized Target reactor with a thermal generator.

Exactly what ISRU part are you using and what isru  process. Could you make a screen dump?

[DGerry]

I can get a screenshot in a couple minutes - I was using the ISRU All-in-One processor at the standard size, and it was the "Regolith Process" reporting "insufficient power".  It was saying 0/40MW despite there being far more than enough power available(and other processes requiring 20MW ran just fine).  I also tried the ISRU "large" processor, also at the standard size, and had the same result.

[DGerry]

Here's a screenshot of what I'm experiencing with the Regolith Process.  Having "enable overflow" turned on doesn't make a difference, but I did try it.  You can see I've got a full tank of regolith and more than enough power available.

The ISRU seems to be drawing 20MW but "needs" 40MW, so it thinks it doesn't have enough power to run?  I'm not sure, but regardless it doesn't work.

[DGerry]

I'm also noticing what looks to be like another bug - Thermal receivers are providing far less power than they ought to be in at least some circumstances.  I have vessels powered by thermal in-line receivers and nozzles that launched perfectly fine before, more thrust than they needed really, but now they can't even get off the pad.  "Effective Input Power" starts out equal to "Input Power" and "Max Input Power" but rapidly drops to zero and then the nozzles just don't produce any thrust.  The KSPI info windows show the "Theoretical Supply" Thermal power at the right amount(in this case, 61GW), but the "Current Supply" and "Power Demand" are anywhere from zero to, at this point in time, 16GW.  I *believe* what's happening is that as the waste heat goes up the "effective" power goes down, but this should reverse when waste heat goes back down and it does not.  I could be wrong on the mechanism behind this, but regardless I don't think I should be seeing 61GW of thermal power coming into a receiver and only 16GW going into the nozzle(everything properly size-matched, and like I said this setup was working perfectly fine previously).

 

Edit:  I should clarify, it's not Waste Heat per se - Waste Heat doesn't build up, which I think was intended by the 1.12.23 release.  What happens is if you start the receiver and don't start the nozzle, the "Effective Input Power" starts to drop.  If you then start the nozzle the "Effective Input Power" will stabilize, but not go back up.  If you lower the throttle from 100%, "Effective Input Power" again will start to drop but raising the throttle back to 100% doesn't cause "Effective Input Power" to go back up.  Not sure if this is related to the handling of throttle input, or related to the changes to wasteheat/power use on beamed power from 1.12.23.

Edited April 18, 2017 by DGerry

[Aaron Also]

Ok I'm ready to start posting pics and descriptions of my power network. I will begin later today with the ground based towers. Then, Wednesday I will do a post for the LKO microwave power sats. Thursday will be the HKO infrared relays and Friday I will cover the HKO infrared power sats. This will cover the vast majority of Kerbin's SOI with many mega watts of power. It is probably overkill, but hey this is KSP right? If it's worth doing; it's worth over doing. 

I am however worried that all the recent updates will throw a curve ball in my designs somewhere, but I suppose we will burn that bridge when we cross it. 

[FreeThinker]

Added a feature which will prevent reactors from producing power when there is sufficient overcapacity, for instance by solar power

This should allow your to preserve you  expansive fusion fuel / antimatter when it is realy needed

Edited April 18, 2017 by FreeThinker

[juanml82]

So, back to the Daedalus, which fusion reactor is best to power it? I have the Tri-something, which is lighter but shouldn't produce that much power, the Tomakaw (sp?), the Stellarator and in the Daedalus tech node there is the IXS, which is far heavier, but comes with an integrated electric converter.

 

I have no idea about how to choose a good fusion reactor for a mothership based on that

[DGerry]

It would be good if the Daedalus specified the MW required to sustain its operation in the right-click context menu or something, that way you could view that info in the VAB.  That being said, I think you're using the Near Future stuff which afaik changes all the power requirements.  What I can tell you is that on "stock" KSPI-E, it requires about 200MW.  I don't know what that means for you in Near Future.

I've also noticed what may be another issue - Tritium Breeding.  I know that an MSR shouldn't breed Tritium very quickly, but I've got a 500GW MSR that I'm using to power a ground-based beamed power network and it produces NO tritium.  On the reactor control panel it shows 0's across the board for Lithium use and Tritium production.  It shows the Tritium breeding rate is "94%" but I don't know what that means.  Tritium amounts never go up by even .01, even after time-warping for a few in-game days.  Not sure if this is a bug or if MSR's were at some point changed to not breed any Tritium at all.

[DGerry]

Is it possible to have radiators consume a resource via just editing a config?  If not, how difficult would it be to make that possible?  I'm thinking about the possibility of "active" radiators that require IntakeAtm to run - very effective, but will only work on planets with an atmosphere(and won't work well with thin atmospheres or high altitudes, etc), or "evaporative" radiators that require water(mostly make-up water, as in real life, so small-ish amounts) again for atmospheric use.