KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[StarStreak2109]

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Solar Power panels no longer generate any Wasteheat. This is now handled by the stock system much better. It does still provide MW power. The old Wasteheat production field and resource is an remnant, I will remove it for next version to stop any confusion. Instead it will show the amount of Megawatt produced, which will be low unless they go near the sun

Ah okay, thanks for clearing that up. 😊

[FreeThinker]

Looks like you are making separate engines and reactors.

So what is advantage of engines that have internal reactor in them over standard engines?

The specialised engine with build in reactor, in general have the advantage that they are available earlier, easier to construct and are more focused on single mission operation with miximum performance. Propusion technology also gives acces to advanced nuclear propusion technologies like oxygen afterburning, advanced propellants, magnetic nozzl,e hybrid turbojet propusion and inertial fusion propusion. Nuclear energy technology forusus on generating long term power production and allows engines which are foremost ment for propulsion, also to generate power. It starts with Molten Salt reactor (first nuclear power which if reprocessed can produce almost infinate long term power), followed by pebblebed, which offer high power at higher temperaturer with minimum maintenance (at the cost of storage), followed by dusty plasma which allows the construction of fission fraction propusion, allowing very high ISP, followed by fusion reactoroffer better charged particle performance.

Edited October 5, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Derwan]

Most likely you are not generating any electric power, please verify if your reactor has run out of fuel, power to sustain the reaction process or the overall system was overheating causing a reactor shutdown.

I have a few dozen solar satellites in orbit around kerbol to fuel things that require a lot of energy. I used those to charge the warp rings, and switched the main ship reactor off while charging. I'm using a 2.5m Antimatter reactor and a 2.5m Charged particles generator.

another thing, is the drive supposed to drain all exotic matter at once? everytime I activate it, it just drains it all and nothing happens.

[FreeThinker]

The exotic matter is required to create a warp field/bubble, you need high power to push it ahead. If you don't supply it with significant amount of power, you will not visibly move (or move very slowly)

Edited October 5, 2015 by FreeThinker

[SciMan]

I just updated KSPI-E to v1.5.9 and I think I found a bug with the TORY nuclear ramjet.

I made a small plane with just a TORY, inline cockpit, 1.25m precooler, and shock-cone intake, with a couple of shuttle wings (filled with Hydrazine thanks to AZBZ's patches). Radiators were rated at more than 4GW (measured with the reactor on the plane), which should work fine for a 1GW reactor.

I know it's a ramjet, so to get the plane up to speed I attached 4 Kickback SRB's to it.

I started the ramjet and solids at the same time, and then staged off the solids when they burnt out. The flight took me just out of the atmosphere (76km Ap).

According to MechJeb, the engine is producing "some" thrust, but only micro to pico newtons of thrust at any velocity from 0 to ~1200+ m/s.

This matches up with the nav-ball, which is showing no speed increase after the solids burn out, and the only G-forces are from deceleration and/or turning.

I have a feeling that it should start to produce more than a newton of thrust somewhere in that range.

The thrust didn't increase when switching to Hydrazine, but the engine didn't shut down.

I have a fully unlocked tech tree, but even if I had "just" unlocked the TORY, it should be producing thrust after the vessel gets up to speed.

I'm not entirely sure what's happening here, but if I had to guess I would say that the math that's supposed to calculate how much thrust the TORY puts out is broken or inverted somehow.

For the sake of testing, I put together a nearly identical plane using the self-contained thermal turbojet (no RATO). That worked exactly as expected, and I was able to make that plane get to orbit with 1km/s left of delta-V in the tanks.

Here's another bug report, while I'm at it.

The "Enriched Uranium Tank" should be switched to a Uranium Tetraflouride Tank.

EnrichedUranium can't be moved from tank to tank, and the Molten Salt reactor doesn't use it anymore.

While I'm on the subject of EnrichedUranium, is any reactor using it (NERVA, Nuclear Thermal Turbojet, TORY, DUMBO) supposed to be essentially "disposable"?

There's no way to refuel them or reprocess their waste, because EnrichedUranium can't be moved out of whatever container it was in when the vessel was launched.

Following from that, EnrichedUranium's waste products shouldn't be Actinides, instead they should be DepletedUranium. This would allow MKS bases to reprocess and refuel solid-core nuclear reactors over a period of time, because MKS already uses the same resources for its power reactors.

Other than those two bugs and the balance suggestion, I have no complaints or issues that I can think of.

Edited October 5, 2015 by SciMan

[okder]

More about turbojet balance:

Direct Cycle Nuclear Turbojet,default sized (1.4MW, 6T), gives same OR MORE thrust than ThermalTurbojet+inertial Confined fusion(+ChargetParticleGen for stable sustaining reaction) all 1.25 sized (!8! MW, ~2.5T),

i understand that ISP and mass ratio is better but why 6 mw (70%) power just thrown away and not influenced on thrust?

(actually core temperature used incorrectly for speed curve and so for atmospheric purposes ISP is useless with current speed curve (again it's the same for both cases, which is wrong,

as molecules expelled at high temperature should give more thrust at high aircraft speed, than 1600K molecules (at same high (1200 m/s) speed)), so ISP difference is lost too, because too little thrust at high speed, which is required to fly at high altitudes (or wings just not work).

with small antimatter reactor this problem became even worse because of antimatter usage. i.e. thrust rises much slowly than reactor power usage,

probably turbojet should be variable ISP/thrust because no point to give small thrust without usage abundant atmosphere at start stage.

P.S. introduced bug (in 1.5.?) after FlameOut(out of atmosphere) engine can't be restarted (at least in space in other fuel mode).

Edited October 5, 2015 by okder

[Profit-]

This is madness, does it still work?

Yes it does still work. I have a refueling ship docked to it that i will share a picture of when I get home. First ship that I have ever used a 5m deuterium tank with and this one has 6 5m deuterium tanks an 16 8000 unit lithium pods. I turned off about 20 of the reactors as there were issues with heat on my little ships and they were cooking

[FreeThinker]

Ramjets work best if you combine them with Turbojets. THe TUrbojet will help the ramjet get up to speed, then when your fly at mach 1.5 , the ramjet come to life and show their true power.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

There is currently a bug which cause them not to function at all when not fitted any other reactor (like nuclear turbojet). I will fix it in the next release

Edited October 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Profit-]

As promised I have pictures of my Orbital Power plant with the resupply ship docked (I did not have much lithium or deuterium to spare on the construction vessel also the radiators are helping manage heat as my others were slightly undersized.)

Now what do I do with all this power you ask??????

That is a good question, as of yet I have found NOTHING to use it all with.. I made a ship that had a TWR greater than 1 using 17 Quantum vacuum thrusters at 2.5M They could not drink all the power up.. (And it over heated really fast)

I just launched this, and it does not come close to using all the power either:

@freethinker

The one thing I really wish for now....

If a space ship is not using the power it receives from a microwave receiver, it clamps it and does not produce the heat, my ships are all doing emergency reactor shutdowns because the power received even at 1% of the receivers capacity is too much for the radiators to support.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Profit-

[Trolllception]

FreeThinker can you please add sound effects to ATILLA thruster? Because I've been abusing ATILLA for a while after knowing it is more efficient than the thermal turbojet, but it feels weird that the engine doesn't produce any sound by itself unlike other jets and rockets

Lets see what the next release brings.

[miyuruasuka]

When RealFuels is installed, KSP Interstellar's engines have the wrong thrust values. Essentially, no matter the choice of reactor, etc, the thrust is always fixed at a particular, arbitrary value.

The easiest way to reproduce this would be to get the CANDLE and turn it on. It always produces 4 kN in vacuum, no matter what type of fuel you give it, although the Isp does properly change.

This is more than a nuisance even though the wrong value is generally in the right order of magnitude, because MechJeb and other similar tools actually think that the maximum thrust is the correct value, when in reality it's stuck at, say, 4 kN for the CANDLE. This means that MechJeb starts burns at the wrong time, crashes probes attempting to use the landing autopilot, etc.

[Cosmonauth]

When RealFuels is installed, KSP Interstellar's engines have the wrong thrust values. Essentially, no matter the choice of reactor, etc, the thrust is always fixed at a particular, arbitrary value.

The easiest way to reproduce this would be to get the CANDLE and turn it on. It always produces 4 kN in vacuum, no matter what type of fuel you give it, although the Isp does properly change.

This is more than a nuisance even though the wrong value is generally in the right order of magnitude, because MechJeb and other similar tools actually think that the maximum thrust is the correct value, when in reality it's stuck at, say, 4 kN for the CANDLE. This means that MechJeb starts burns at the wrong time, crashes probes attempting to use the landing autopilot, etc.

MechJeb meant for stock conventional engines. It may act odd with KSPIE engines, but that doesn't mean something wrong with KSPIE. As you can see, thrust, or dV for those engines may vary, and MJ not designed to predict that. But you still can land your probes with Translatron, after you deorbit manually. Personally I don't trust MechJeb Landing autopilot, especially flying vessels with KSPIE engines

[FreeThinker]

As promised I have pictures of my Orbital Power plant with the resupply ship docked (I did not have much lithium or deuterium to spare on the construction vessel also the radiators are helping manage heat as my others were slightly undersized.)

http://s16.postimg.org/y5g9hzsdt/image.jpg

Now what do I do with all this power you ask??????

That is a good question, as of yet I have found NOTHING to use it all with.. I made a ship that had a TWR greater than 1 using 17 Quantum vacuum thrusters at 2.5M They could not drink all the power up.. (And it over heated really fast)

I just launched this, and it does not come close to using all the power either:

http://s13.postimg.org/evvusl1kz/image.jpg

@freethinker

The one thing I really wish for now....

If a space ship is not using the power it receives from a microwave receiver, it clamps it and does not produce the heat, my ships are all doing emergency reactor shutdowns because the power received even at 1% of the receivers capacity is too much for the radiators to support.

mm, I always considered adjusting power production and power consumption a deliberate difficulty to compensate for the overpowered efficencies of power transmission which in reality are much lower. For instance, their is no limit on the amount of power that can be transmitted by a single transmitter. But transmitters are essentialy tiny lamps which generate infrared light. Like all lamps they have an upper power limit and tend to be less efficent to more power you try to generate. Also The conversion from infrared back to electric power is way to optimitistic as it essentialy photo electric cells that convert photons in the infrared sectrum back to power.

Edited October 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Just a quick question for you Free Thinker. Approximately when should I look for the next update? Since I can't play KSP without doing horrible things to existing vessels at the moment until the compatability is fixed with AJE, I'm watching this thread like a hawk. Should I hang up my aircraft keys for a few days?

[FancyMouse]

Is it a bug, or my bug, or by design that my antimatter storage tank doesn't require any power? It shows "no power required" if I discharge, no matter how much antimatter I have. Tried to reload (thinking that the assignment of antimatter variable happens only at OnStart might be the reason) but nope doesn't help. Charge always stay at max 1000. No reactor+generator on ship doesn't bring me any problem. Although it's a good thing, I don't want my craft to break if it's a bug and fixed in the future.

[FreeThinker]

Just a quick question for you Free Thinker. Approximately when should I look for the next update? Since I can't play KSP without doing horrible things to existing vessels at the moment until the compatability is fixed with AJE, I'm watching this thread like a hawk. Should I hang up my aircraft keys for a few days?

I have already fixed the problem, but I wanted to do some additional testing and add some new functionality which you probably will appreciate Depending how much attention my wife requires I will commit a new release this evenint or tomorrow.

Edited October 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[miyuruasuka]

MechJeb meant for stock conventional engines. It may act odd with KSPIE engines, but that doesn't mean something wrong with KSPIE. As you can see, thrust, or dV for those engines may vary, and MJ not designed to predict that. But you still can land your probes with Translatron, after you deorbit manually. Personally I don't trust MechJeb Landing autopilot, especially flying vessels with KSPIE engines

No, the issues is not with MechJeb. There is no issue as long as Real Fuels is not installed. Please see these screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/HqPe0. The thrust should be 12.4 kN in space, and it is without RealFuels, but with RealFuels it's stuck at 4 kN. *This* is what confuses MechJeb, because it's getting conflicting values from different places.

[FreeThinker]

No, the issues is not with MechJeb. There is no issue as long as Real Fuels is not installed. Please see these screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/HqPe0. The thrust should be 12.4 kN in space, and it is without RealFuels, but with RealFuels it's stuck at 4 kN. *This* is what confuses MechJeb, because it's getting conflicting values from different places.

Crap, that means RealFuels is messing with the engine fuel pump. This is something new. Does it happen will all engines or just the Candle?

[miyuruasuka]

Crap, that means RealFuels is messing with the engine fuel pump. This is something new. Does it happen will all engines or just the Candle?

It happens with all the engines. It's always stuck to the thrust listed in the VAB. Please fix this ASAP, it makes Interstellar really unplayable for me because I rely heavily on RealFuels. I'm ending up only using the reactors for electricity.

Edit: I'm guessing this has something to do with RealFuels' usage of SolverEngines (similar to AJE); could you look into better integration with SolverEngines with KSP Interstellar, maybe even use SolverEngines to implement thrust switching etc?

Edited October 6, 2015 by miyuruasuka

[FreeThinker]

It happens with all the engines. It's always stuck to the thrust listed in the VAB. Please fix this ASAP, it makes Interstellar really unplayable for me because I rely heavily on RealFuels. I'm ending up only using the reactors for electricity.

Seems like I cannot do anything about it. It's a RealFuels which is taking over control over KSPI engines. Please ask them to stop making KSPI unplayable

Edited October 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[miyuruasuka]

Seems like I cannot do anything about it. It's a RealFuels which is taking over control over KSPI engines. Please ask them to stop making KSPI unplayable

Can you explain exactly in what way is RealFuels taking control over engines? I think this is simply because KSPI doesn't use SolverEngines, and I think that you should consider moving to it, because AJE and a few other mods also use SolverEngines.

[FreeThinker]

RealFuels has probably replaced the ModulesEngine partModule by a custom part which prevent me from accesing the engines the way I'm used to

It's not very nice of them to hyjack control of kspi engines without any counseling.

Can you explain exactly in what way is RealFuels taking control over engines? I think this is simply because KSPI doesn't use SolverEngines, and I think that you should consider moving to it, because AJE and a few other mods also use SolverEngines.

I'm I suddenly forced to use SolverEngines just to control kspi engines?

Edited October 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Modemus]

Adding this in, because of K.I.S.S. I had trouble making sense of this, and I'm a pretty smart guy.

To make it simple for anyone who has issues with getting warp to work (no offense to creator and wiki's made, but sometimes you have to put it in idiots terms for ease of understanding), you will need:

reactor

generator

generator fuel tanks

RADIATORS (and a healthy dose of, otherwise good luck charging the drive)

if you already have these on your craft, I cant help you. This just deals with the part i had trouble with( didnt stop to think the reactor would need the generator too. derp moment i know)

amazing mod as always, keep it up!

[Profit-]

Wow. I have to say it is stunning that another modder would think it is ok to mess with "your" engines without asking and then post it as a mod.

[FreeThinker]

Well, they could have applied the same policy they applied for Modular Fuel tanks, which is to only apply the conversion for mods that opt in. Instead they indiscriminately convert all engines to SolverEngines causing me to lose all control. It's like your children are unexpectedly forced into a S3X change and get traumatized, not listing to your anymore. How would you feel about that?

Edited October 6, 2015 by FreeThinker