KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[FreeThinker]

14 hours ago, ss8913 said:

One other thing I noticed, WasteHeat dissipation seems to happen at 1x (real time), no matter what your time warp value is.  ie, you will lose X heat per second (relative to real seconds), no matter what your time warp is.  This is somewhat of a problem.

How did you come to this conclusion, and what radiators are affected?

The correct way to test it, would be to use full power and wait for 100% wasteheat utilisation and then use timewarp. If wasteheat stays more or less the same, it works as it should. This has been my observation

Edited April 22, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

It seems like there is bug with wasteheat, if you use one reactor for electricity production (for fusion reactor) and other for propulsion.

I turned off electrical engine - most of electricity (around 40 MW) goes to two small fussion reactors, that power atmospheric turbojets.

When I turned on electricity cheat and turned off antimatter initiated reactors waste heat problem disappeared.

Edited April 23, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, raxo2222 said:

It seems like there is bug with wasteheat, if you use one reactor for electricity production (for fusion reactor) and other for propulsion.

I turned off electrical engine - most of electricity (around 40 MW) goes to two small fussion reactors, that power atmospheric turbojets.

When I turned on electricity cheat and turned off antimatter initiated reactors waste heat problem disappeared.

you have to be more clear what is going wrong

[raxo2222]

4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

you have to be more clear what is going wrong

Im using less than 100 MW of power to power thermal engines using fusion reactors and ARCJET RCS and I'm getting around 7 GW of waste heat (I produce electricity in Antimatter Initiated reactor with charged particle generator)

Edited April 23, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

Im using less than 100 MW of power to power thermal engines using fusion reactors and ARCJET RCS and I'm getting around 7 GW of waste heat (I produce electricity in Antimatter Initiated reactor with charged particle generator)

That indeed look strange, could you please look what the effect is of an experimental build 1.12.25 which can be download from here

Changelog:

* Added prioritize power management balancing

* Fixed some power management  imbalances

* Fixed Radiator stock cooling for umbrella radiator

* Fixe Fuel input amount and waste products for QSR and Antimatter reactor

Edited April 23, 2017 by FreeThinker

[ss8913]

@FreeThinker - reproducing my issue is fairly easy.  Launch a craft.  Observe the dHeat/dt rate at 1x timewarp.  Accelerate to Nx timewarp where N > 1, note that dHeat/dt is the same, where 't' is in realtime.  Seems pretty consistent.  You can look at the stock resource window too and notice that the delta value does not change with timewarp.  It might be because WasteHeat is a consumable resource that's not intended to change with non-physics timewarp, since you can't burn fuel in that mode (usually, at least as far as stock KSP is concerned)...?  That's just speculation on my part, however.

[ss8913]

@FreeThinker remember a while back I was talking about atmospheric composition on planets outside of the Kerbol system... well I know you're familiar with the Interstellar Adventures pack - I tried analyzing the atmosphere of Thallos, which orbits TRAPPIST-1 ... the atmospheric composition is incomplete.  I'm not sure why but this is representative of what I find on all non-stock planets:  See the GC/MS Atmospheric Composition window just to the right of the craft in this picture.

[FreeThinker]

13 hours ago, ss8913 said:

@FreeThinker - reproducing my issue is fairly easy.  Launch a craft.  Observe the dHeat/dt rate at 1x timewarp.  Accelerate to Nx timewarp where N > 1, note that dHeat/dt is the same, where 't' is in realtime.  Seems pretty consistent.  You can look at the stock resource window too and notice that the delta value does not change with timewarp.  It might be because WasteHeat is a consumable resource that's not intended to change with non-physics timewarp, since you can't burn fuel in that mode (usually, at least as far as stock KSP is concerned)...?  That's just speculation on my part, however.

 

If that would be true, than you would not be able to have a high power reactor active while on maximum time warp. What I think you are observing is the so-called negative exponential growth effect, which makes it appear groth is is the same at higher time warp. the best way to test if wasteheat isn't handled correctly at timewarp would be to wait untill 99% stabalisation and then time acelerate and observe the effect

[raxo2222]

17 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

That indeed look strange, could you please look what the effect is of an experimental build 1.12.25 which can be download from here

Changelog:

* Added prioritize power management balancing

* Fixed some power management  imbalances

* Fixed Radiator stock cooling for umbrella radiator

* Fixe Fuel input amount and waste products for QSR and Antimatter reactor

Sadly still doesn't work - when antimatter initiated  reactor is on there is generated a lot of waste heat while producing power for fusion engine.

Also it seems also some  power is used by thermal turbojets.

It seems like antimatter initiated reactors try to pump very uneffectively thermal/charged power to feed thermal turbojets, that are radially attached to many other parts in between.

Edited April 24, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

22 minutes ago, raxo2222 said:

Sadly still doesn't work - when antimatter initiated  reactor is on there is generated a lot of waste heat while producing power for fusion engine.

Also it seems also some  power is used by thermal turbojets.

 

 

 

 

Technically what it does is correct , it will only use antimatter reactor when it realy has to, but I guess you want to prioritise power production for the 2 antimatter reactor. What I could do is add a control to the antimatter reactor which will override it default electric power priority from lowest to higher.

 

Edit: Btw, could you make the vessel available, I would like to use it for tests

Edited April 24, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

2 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Technically what it does is correct , it will only use antimatter reactor when it realy has to, but I guess you want to prioritise power production for the 2 antimatter reactor. What I could do is add a control to the antimatter reactor which will override it default electric power priority from lowest to higher.

Or make option for engines to use energy from connected reactor only.

This way fusion reactor would power engine, and antimatter initiated reactor with generator will produce energy only to power fusion reactors without setting graphene radiators to blazing hot 2000 K.

Edited April 24, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

Just now, raxo2222 said:

Or make option for engines to use energy from connected reactor only.

Wait a second, you mean the thermal generators that are supposed to be connected to the AIM reactors get connected to the thermal fusion engines instead. OMG

[raxo2222]

11 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Wait a second, you mean the thermal generators that are supposed to be connected to the AIM reactors get connected to the thermal fusion engines instead. OMG

Nope. I meant ability to limit engin raw power usage to only reactor, that is connected inline.

Well apparently I got much different results when I did one fusion reactor with reactor and one antimatter initiated reactor with charged generator.

Now AIM reactor produces only 0.76% of potential power instead of 46%.

Edit: here is spacecraft: http://www52.zippyshare.com/v/KrVfBc6q/file.html

It has action groups: 1 toggles thermal engines and 2 toggles electrical engine.

Edited April 24, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

29 minutes ago, raxo2222 said:

Now AIM reactor produces only 0.76% of potential power instead of 46.

 

What happens is the Thermal Generator connected to the MTF aims to generate most electric power, while the AIM Generator sits idle. it should have been the other way around. I will by changing the default priority.

Let's make a electric power generator priority table

Reactor	Priority
QSR, Tri Alpha	1
MCF, Fission Fragment	2
AIM, Antimatter	3
Magnitised Targed Fusion , Molten Salt , Pebble Bed	4

 

At the same time, engines/generators should only be able to get thermal power from it connected reactor

Edit: Btw priority it is currently a configuration setting, which you could modify with an text editor, you should try it

 

Edited April 24, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

13 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

What happens is the Thermal Generator connected to the MTF aims to generate most electric power, while the AIM Generator sits idle. it should have been the other way around. I will by changing the default priority.

Let's make a electric power generator priority table

Reactor	Priority
QSR, Tri Alpha	1
MCF, Fission Fragment	2
AIM, Antimatter	3
Magnitised Targed Fusion , Molten Salt , Pebble Bed	4

 

At the same time, engines/generators should only be able to get thermal power from it connected reactor

 

And thermal turbojet was using thermal/charged power from AIM, when there was like 10 parts (including going radially twice in spaceplane, that I gave link to) between AIM reactor and engine, but not when there were 3 parts inline between AIM and Thermal Turbojet (charged gen. for AIM, thermal gen. for MCF and fusion reactor)

 

Edited April 24, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

Re-Prioritizing seem to work quite well

Notice the new electric priority slider

Edited April 24, 2017 by FreeThinker

[baconfortress]

On 4/18/2017 at 1:10 AM, DGerry said:

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.

I am having a problem like this with nearly every engine type. For some reason I cannot get engines to behave on beamed power, they all fizzle out after a few seconds despite having all the relevant resources

[FreeThinker]

New development: MHD generator will behave more like MHD generators meaning they are thermal electric generators allowing to convert plasma into energy at maximum efficiency

This effectivly allow reactors like the Gas Core reactor to operate as reasonably efficient electric generators, making them ideal for electric propusion

Edited April 25, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

On 22-4-2017 at 2:32 AM, ss8913 said:

Alright, so anyone interested in compressed air, I finally made it work...

 

that's 20 2.5m gas tanks set to Air mode, with the compressedair <-> intakeAtm slider set to full left (-100),

 

 

1

That is quite impressive, but why didn't you make use of the ISRU Refrigerator? it has an air compressor that is much more powerful.  The whole part is technically a gas compressor cooler 

Edited April 26, 2017 by FreeThinker

[ss8913]

9 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

That is quite impressive, but why didn't you make use of the ISRU Refrigerator? it has an air compressor that is much more powerful.  The whole part is technically a gas compressor cooler 

because I didn't know about the refrigerator   I will try that out... thanks

Any idea why Thallo and other extra-Kerbolular planets don't have complete atmospheric composition numbers, as per the screenshot I posted a few days ago showing the GC/MS window on Thallo?  It's important because the ISRU won't work there if KSPIE doesn't know what gases are in the atmosphere, and it appears that is the case...

[FreeThinker]

5 hours ago, ss8913 said:

because I didn't know about the refrigerator   I will try that out... thanks

Any idea why Thallo and other extra-Kerbolular planets don't have complete atmospheric composition numbers, as per the screenshot I posted a few days ago showing the GC/MS window on Thallo?  It's important because the ISRU won't work there if KSPIE doesn't know what gases are in the atmosphere, and it appears that is the case...

It should generate a composition based on it characteristics, but obvious it doesn't fully work except it adds some minor gases.

Edited April 27, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

On 26.04.2017 at 6:15 PM, FreeThinker said:

That is quite impressive, but why didn't you make use of the ISRU Refrigerator? it has an air compressor that is much more powerful.  The whole part is technically a gas compressor cooler 

Well it would be nice if it had tiny compressed air buffer.

Edit:

Thermal Turbojets cause even far away reactors by part connection distance to throttle up.

Also flat radiators need to be flatter - they seem to cut trough wing if upscaled.

 

Radiators are similiarly very hot when running on electrical engine.

 

Wow these refrigators are really good compressors - I was able to have 2.5m  WAKEFIELD accelerator run at full thrust and full power at 25 000 km altitude!

Edited April 27, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, raxo2222 said:

Thermal Turbojets cause even far away reactors by part connection distance to throttle up.

This issue is addressed in the next (beta) release

 

1 hour ago, raxo2222 said:

Also flat radiators need to be flatter - they seem to cut trough wing if upscaled.

I agree,  due to lack of a good flat radiator part I'm considering re scaling and texturing the solar panel into a flat square radiator, it should also considerably lower air drag. Perhaps someone can help me with that or provide a better model

Edited April 27, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, raxo2222 said:

Radiators are similiarly very hot when running on electrical engine

Sure but don't forget graphene radiator don't perform well in thick atmosphere, they perform best in space

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

.Wow these refrigators are really good compressors - I was able to have 2.5m  WAKEFIELD accelerator run at full thrust and full power at 25 000 km altitude!

Yes, you you can technically even run them in reverse allowing usage of turbo/ramjet in space, for a short time ...

A major upcoming change:

Integrated Thermal Electric Generator Alternator in Nuclear Propulsion engine which feed from the idle power produced from the nuclear reactor.

This indirectly means that they will no longer be able to connect to external Electric generator, but this is intended as these engine where never mend for Megajoule electric  power production.

 

Edited April 27, 2017 by FreeThinker