[0.20] RemoteTech: Relay Network – V 0.5.0.1

[John FX]

An integration that takes kOS functionality (without the weird requirements for multiple antennae) and the RT requirements for line of sight, a number of (stock looking) dishes and some sort of signal delay would be ideal for me. With kOS there is no need for a RT flight computer. The basics of a long distance communication properly translated into a mod will do perfectly.

Somehow kOS' attempt at 'realistic' long distance communications just does not work out (for me) as it is artificial and not very logical, and the same goes for the flight computer attempt RT made as it is very limited. I can only dream of a game where I need to maintain contact for direct control or to upload code and where my crafts can operate independently according to scrips/code when contact is lost, whether that is intentional (circulization burns on the far side of bodies) or accidental (forgetting to deploy a critical antenna). Pretty much just like the real thing.

I`d buy that for a dollar!

[J.Random]

I haven't actually worked on RT2 in ages. KSP interest has faded. You'll most likely have to wait for 0.22 before I get back into it again. So consider RT2 to be on hiatus until 0.22 or JDP starts pushing me.

I was wondering why wasn't there any update for more than a month, and here it is. Most unfortunate. RT has become "must have" mod for me. I hope you'll return to it, or someone forks it.

[don.peugot]

Against the advice in the first post, I am using Remote Tech 2 in my "realistic" savegame file to set up a sat network. So far, I have been able to put satellites as far as Duna without game-breaking issues. Everything is working surprisingly fine for a "playtest"-version.

The only two issues I have encoutered are the following:

(1) After completing a scheduled burn with the flight computer, the throttle gets stuck at 100%. It does not go back to 0%. The workaround I use is to schedule a burn of 10,000 s with 0% throttle after the time of the burn duration has passed.

(2) The node tracker of the flight computer does not work. Instead, clicking on "node" results in the ship being pointed prograde.

Besides these two issues, the main problem I see is mostly concering the flight computer: Right now, it is very tedious to complete a node execution. You have to use a calculator and a stopwatch to find the right burn point and duration. A working node position tracker and a delta-v burn scheduler would help a lot, a simple "execute node" button would also be an option.

Until the development goes on, I fully agree with Sandworm's position:

That is horrible news, but before anyone abandons this mod I'll make a suggestion for saving it: take the working bits of RemoteTech2 and release them as RemoteTechLIGHT.

(1) Dump the flight computer/autopilot. Players can hand-fly connected craft. This would mean that disconnected craft will not be able to perform maneuvers (unrealistic) but would require players to carefully plan when/where maneuvers happen (realistic).

(2) Dump the time delay. Without a flight computer, hand-flying via a delay is impossible. This feature was never very realistic anyway. Calculating in how many seconds a maneuver should happen was burdensome, especially as KSP does not provide proper thrust data until an engine actually starts. Asking a craft to execute a maneuver at a specific time, as opposed to after a specific delay, would be more realistic but difficult to implement given KSP's limitations.

With those features gone, RemoteTechLIGHT would keep RemoteTech's concept of connected/disconnected craft (the antenna system) and could be released without major recoding.

In the meantime (since the current flight computer makes it almost impossible to execute complicated burns far away from a command center), does anyone know how to turn up the signal speed / speed of light? The remotetech.cfg in the KSP root folder contains a "signal speed" parameter, but changing the figures in it seems to have no effect on the game. Plus, after launching KSP the modified remotetech.cfg gets replaced by an unmodified one. Setting the modified one to read-only prevents this, but still doesn't change the signal speed in game. Ideas, anyone?

TL;DR: How to crank up the signal speed / speed of light in Remote Tech 2?

[Ralathon]

In the meantime (since the current flight computer makes it almost impossible to execute complicated burns far away from a command center), does anyone know how to turn up the signal speed / speed of light? The remotetech.cfg in the KSP root folder contains a "signal speed" parameter, but changing the figures in it seems to have no effect on the game. Plus, after launching KSP the modified remotetech.cfg gets replaced by an unmodified one. Setting the modified one to read-only prevents this, but still doesn't change the signal speed in game. Ideas, anyone?

TL;DR: How to crank up the signal speed / speed of light in Remote Tech 2?

In your main KSP folder (The one with the Gamedata, Screenshots and the .exe) should be a .cfg file called "RemoteTech". Open it up with notepad and you should see:

//  RemoteTech2 configuration file.

REMOTE_TECH
{
	SignalSpeed = 2.997924E+08
	MapFilter = Dish, OnlyPath
}

Change the signal speed into something ridiculous like 1E+15 or something and delay should be negligible.

[don.peugot]

In your main KSP folder (The one with the Gamedata, Screenshots and the .exe) should be a .cfg file called "RemoteTech". Open it up with notepad and you should see:

//  RemoteTech2 configuration file.

REMOTE_TECH
{
	SignalSpeed = 2.997924E+08
	MapFilter = Dish, OnlyPath
}

Change the signal speed into something ridiculous like 1E+15 or something and delay should be negligible.

I did exactly that (as described in my previous post) but it doesn't change anything.

After a restart of KSP the remotetech.cfg even gets replaced by the original, unmodified file. It's weird. Any ideas?

[Ralathon]

I did exactly that (as described in my previous post) but it doesn't change anything.

After a restart of KSP the remotetech.cfg even gets replaced by the original, unmodified file. It's weird. Any ideas?

Bah, I should really start fully reading posts before replying sorry.

I just tested it myself and indeed it seems to replace the value back to an unmodified version. How weird. No idea how to fix that however.

[don.peugot]

Bah, I should really start fully reading posts before replying sorry.

I just tested it myself and indeed it seems to replace the value back to an unmodified version. How weird. No idea how to fix that however.

Exactly. I did a whole series of tests (stock KSP, not stock, read-only on/off, different figures etc) but the results were all the same: No change of signal delay in game. So, if anyone knows how to disable the signal delay in RT2, please share it with us.

[NathanKell]

So...for my own use I decided to add tracking of the length of the last leg, and the max length possible for the last leg. That's now shown in the GUI, so you no longer have to guess when you'll go out of range.

While I was there I added support for multiple antennae/dishes, though you get much less bang for your buck the more you add.

And I changed the range calculation so instead of just the minimum of the maxrange of the two nodes you get something properly additive, as a hack to simulate transmitter and receiver strength on both ends. (Formula at the moment is, for nodes with differing max ranges, min_range + sqrt(min_range * max_range), clamped to no more than 100 x min_range for antennae and 1000x min_range for dishes).

Anyone interested?

ETA:

Example: a link between a node with 4x3000km antennae (equates to 5.25Mm), and a node with a 20Mm dish pointed at the first node, yields a max range of 15.5Mm. Note that because range is no longer clamped to min of the two nodes', I down-scaled antenna and dish ranges for my parts.

Edited September 30, 2013 by NathanKell
Added example.

[Ratzap]

Looks good Nathan and good idea I think. I'd give it a go but I'm too busy with other things atm.

[power5000]

that sounds awesome nathan

[rkman]

(Formula at the moment is, for nodes with differing max ranges, min_range + sqrt(min_range * max_range), clamped to no more than 100 x min_range for antennae and 1000x min_range for dishes).

Interesting. That looks a lot like the formula i discussed with JDP some time back.

I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference in practice (at least it includes inverse square law), but for your consideration i'll give the formula that i arrived at:

effective comms link range = sqrt (transmitter power * gain of antenna 1 * gain of antenna 2) * rangemultiplier

* antenna gain takes the place of antenna range. (normally gain is expressed in dB, but for this purpose it is a factor in the range of ~100 to several 1000, maybe more, depending on the size of the dish antenna)

* the point of separating antenna gain and transmitter power is that transmitter power dictates a craft's electric power requirements, but antenna gain only affects craft mass and size.

* "transmitter power" is the output power of the least powerful transmitter involved in the link; the weakest link in the chain dictates max effective range. On the other hand the gain of both antennas affects signal strength in both directions. (transmitter power is not the same as effective transmitted power, which is the product of transmitter power and antenna gain).

rangemultiplier = 1000 (to be tuned for balance)

* rangemultiplier is a constant, representing receiver sensitivity, noise floor and miscellaneous losses. Same for all comms in the KSP universe.

For reference: Voyager 1 transmitter power is only 13Watts, its dish antenna has a gain factor of about 100.000.

http://www.mike-willis.com/Tutorial/PF4.htm

"The transmitter power is about 13 watts at 8415MHz. The 3.7m antenna has a gain of 48 dB which makes this an effective power in our direction of 800kW."

Edited October 1, 2013 by rkman

[rkman]

support for multiple antennae/dishes, though you get much less bang for your buck the more you add.

Another for-your-consideration:

It is possible to 'stack' certain types of antenna to increase the gain, essentially without diminishing return. That's often technically easier than making a larger/longer single antenna.

This does not work for dishes but it does work for so-called Yagi-antennas (commonly used for radio and TV broadcast reception) and a derivative thereof that's often used in space comms: circular polarization Yagi antennas.

Yagi array

http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ja5ovu.jpg

Array of circular polarization antennas

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Traqueur_acquisition.JPG/220px-Traqueur_acquisition.JPG

It is somewhat questionable if this is relevant to KSP. Yagi's are basically not used on spacecraft because dish antenna are more effective at the high frequencies that space comms usually operates on. Yagi's and arrays thereof (circular polarization or not) really only make sense for ground stations.

But if it would be included then it would mean allowing multiple of the same antennas (of the proper type - not dishes nor omni-directionals) to be connected to one and the same transmitter, and double the antenna gain for each doubling of the number of antennas.

Edited October 1, 2013 by rkman

[Jivaii]

Getting a remote tech relay system set-up in a new save when I have almost no idea what I'm doing...is way too fun!

[rottielover]

I was wondering why wasn't there any update for more than a month, and here it is. Most unfortunate. RT has become "must have" mod for me. I hope you'll return to it, or someone forks it.

I died a little inside.

[Oinker]

RE: RT2 development on hold: I died a little inside.

Don't cry. It's been said many times before that RT 0.5.0.1 is .21 compatible with the addition of Mr. DBrickShaw's modified RT dll. It fixes the flight computer not working. It can be downloaded from previous posts or GitHub. It is also included in the re-released "MechJeb and RemoteTech for All".

[NathanKell]

I'll post my code as a pull to DBrinkShaw's fork. Let me just get it together...(it now has toggles for each gameplay change, so you can use traditional RT algorithms with my GUI addition)

[NathanKell]

rkman, sorry I didn't answer before!

Yeah, you were the person I was thinking of--I had some memory of discussion previously in this thread. Because I wanted bolt-on compatibility (and am lazy...) I didn't implement separate gain and power, but I wanted a similar inverse-square multiplicative relationship, although as a hack to simulate your considerations I weighted it towards the weaker antenna and added the clamp factor.

I guess to be fair I should go back and change it so multiple dishes don't stack...but since we're size-limited on dishes I wanted there to be some way of simulating a massive DSM dish talking to a bitty Voyager dish, and the best I could think of was allowing multiple MI-128s.

https://github.com/NathanKell/RemoteTech

This is the fork from DBrinkShaw's fixes. It also has a compiled DLL and two CFGs. They are set up to use the RT2 parts; I only bothered to cover the RCAntenna from RT1 (and the stock LongAntenna and CommDish).

So you need the parts folder from RT2.

[John FX]

rkman, sorry I didn't answer before!

Yeah, you were the person I was thinking of--I had some memory of discussion previously in this thread. Because I wanted bolt-on compatibility (and am lazy...) I didn't implement separate gain and power, but I wanted a similar inverse-square multiplicative relationship, although as a hack to simulate your considerations I weighted it towards the weaker antenna and added the clamp factor.

I guess to be fair I should go back and change it so multiple dishes don't stack...but since we're size-limited on dishes I wanted there to be some way of simulating a massive DSM dish talking to a bitty Voyager dish, and the best I could think of was allowing multiple MI-128s.

https://github.com/NathanKell/RemoteTech

This is the fork from DBrinkShaw's fixes. It also has a compiled DLL and two CFGs. They are set up to use the RT2 parts; I only bothered to cover the RCAntenna from RT1 (and the stock LongAntenna and CommDish).

So you need the parts folder from RT2.

All I can see is a collection of files. Do we need to download all the files one by one, just some, or is there a compressed file somewhere with all the files we need in it?

[Rockstar04]

All I can see is a collection of files. Do we need to download all the files one by one, just some, or is there a compressed file somewhere with all the files we need in it?

There is a button on the right hand side that says Download Zip to get all the files at once. Here is a link straight to it: Download NathanKell RemoteTech Fork

[Camacha]

Another for-your-consideration:

This does not work for dishes

It seems to work for radio telescopes, or am I consusing things?

[NathanKell]

Sorry, I totally forgot to respond here!

To use my branch:

1. Install Remotetech1

2. Delete all the dishes and antennae in the parts folder.

3. Drop in the dishes and antennae from the RT2 playtest version's parts folder.

4. From my github repo, download the RemoteTech DLL and replace your existing copy with it.

5. From my github repo, download the two CFG files and place them in your RemoteTech folder.

Done.

( My repo: https://github.com/NathanKell/RemoteTech )

Edited October 8, 2013 by NathanKell
added repo

[Firenexus13]

Is he still working on this?

[rottielover]

Sorry, I totally forgot to respond here!

To use my branch:

1. Install Remotetech1

2. Delete all the dishes and antennae in the parts folder.

3. Drop in the dishes and antennae from the RT2 playtest version's parts folder.

4. From my github repo, download the RemoteTech DLL and replace your existing copy with it.

5. From my github repo, download the two CFG files and place them in your RemoteTech folder.

Done.

I'm sorry I guess I'm super dense, where is your github repo located?

EDIT: Thank you, I'll try it now.

[NathanKell]

It was nestled a page back, with the first set of install instructions:

https://github.com/NathanKell/RemoteTech

I edited it in to the install instructions--thanks, should have been there from the start.

[rottielover]

I think I followed instructions, I deleted all the subfolders in the parts directory and put in the parts from RT2. I replaced the DLL and I put in the two CFG's. Fired up KSP and no matter ant or dish I put on, I'm out of contact even on the launchpad. What might I have done wrong?