[PSA][1.5.1]Panarchist Space Alliance Dev Thread

[panarchist]

Panarchist Space Alliance Development Thread

This thread is for the under-development PSA mods:

PSA Greenhouse (release thread) - Currently a USI-LS greenhouse, but adding support for TAC-LS and Snacks is next on my to-do list

PSA HarderStockSystem (a resurrection mangle of @stevehead's Harder Solar System)

PSA Loaners (a hodgepodge of Parts from various parts mods which all have CC BY-NC 3.0 licensing) - this one is explained below

PSA Airfleet (Tweakscale configs and other MM patches to support building flying aircraft carriers - intended for use with @Angel-125's Heisenberg mod and @flywlyx's Aircraft Carrier Accessories)

 

Mini-FAQ:

What is this? "Panarchist Space Alliance" is the name I settled on for my mods. Most of them will relate to the story I am telling in the Mission Reports section of the forums and on my website, once I get that up and running. The PSA is the story of Kerbin uniting to explore space and find out more about their origins, and uses several Kopernicus mods: OPM, GPP, and Extrasolar. Some of the mods are meant to allow anyone to create the same game mods that I am using, and in some cases to consolidate parts to a single mod.

Why a dev thread? Because I have experience writing config files, but not a lot modding doing things like writing dlls, or making IVAs, or fixing models or texturing.  This gives me an opportunity to ask questions, solicit help, and give people an idea what I am up to. So far, PSA Greenhouse is the only posted and in-production mod. It's basically just one of @zzz's public-domain models with some associated config files, but a handful of people really liked it as an alternative greenhouse for USI-LS. So now I can share with them the progress of a guy who is an old, slow newbie.

Aren't you just scamming other people's stuff? In some cases, yes. "Loaners" in particular is exactly that - I am cherry-picking parts from several mods to bundle in one download because I only want a few parts from each mod, and don't care about the rest, and want to reduce my memory footprint. In that case in particular, all of the mods are CC BY-NC 3.0 licensed, meaning I already have permission to redistribute and modify those items, so long as I detail what changes I made and give appropriate attribution - which I am doing. I plan to release those under CC BY-NC 4.0. In all of my mods, I am adhering to the license, only combining things if the license permits, and if all items are under the same license; and I am notifying the mod's developer or maintainer on the initial release. Because that's the right thing to do. I don't generally notify the developer if the license is "public domain", MIT, WTFPL, or "do what you want", for what I hope are obvious reasons.

I should also note that the purpose for the "bundle" mods is for anyone who wants to create a game like the one I'm playing, or who wants the same specific parts I'm putting in the bundle. It's pretty useless to anyone else, and there's nothing stopping people from downloading all the mods from their sources and mixing and matching their own.

Who the heck are you? I am Matt Picio, a financial systems manager in his 40s, former KSP QA team member (check the 1.0 credits - I QA'd from 0.90 - 1.2), occasional mod mangler, bicycle camper (I founded a nonprofit that teaches people how to camp by bicycle), and veteran gamer (videogames, "Tabletop" RPGs, board games, card games - you name it).

What Next? Here's my plan currently:

• Update PSA Greenhouse for USI-LS - this is in progress, I have a few technical hurdles to overcome, mostly updating old modules (some from v0.24 of KSP) to less crusty versions - especially the solar panel
• Update PSA Greenhouse to add TAC-LS and Snacks compatibility
• Release Airfleet with the initial Tweakscale configs, and change the PSA Greenhouse release thread to be a general "PSA" release thread
• Release HarderStockSystem after adding some descriptive pics to the release thread
• Release Loaners 1.0
• Add more parts to Loaners 1.0
• Start working on an IVA for an as-yet-unnamed project

After that, who knows? I plan on deploying to Github and Spacedock, I do not plan on accommodating CKAN (sorry), nor deploying to Curse.

 

Edited October 12, 2017 by panarchist

[panarchist]

Update on the PSA Greenhouse - I've rebalanced it for USI-LS, but I don't think it's working correctly.. I've added support for Snacks and TAC-LS, but Snacks isn't balanced yet and is WAY undepowered. TAC-LS hasn't been tested yet, it's next on my list.

[panarchist]

I took a long hiatus from KSP - mostly due to having a kid. Now that the dust has settled, it's time to get back to work.

First up is updating the greenhouse. It's never truly been balanced for USI, and I'm adding support for TAC-LS and Snacks. Kerbalism is already using the same part model, so no need to support that one.

TAC-LS parameters are mostly taken from NASA's 2015 Baseline doc for Advanced Life Support: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20150002905.pdf

Using zzz's model, if you assume a flat plane, the 2.5m version has 10m2 of growing surface, and the 3.75m version has ~25m2 (technically 22.7 or something like that). Working off the averages for crops given in the NASA doc, and using Taranis Elsu's math for Kerbal consumption incorporated into TAC-LS, that means that the 2.5m version provides enough food for 0.5 kerbals. The 3.75m version would feed 1.25 kerbals. If, instead of assuming a flat plane for growing surface, you assume the actual circumference - you get 15.8m2 for the 2.5m version. It's possible that the effective growing area could be 4-5x the actual growing area - in real life, there are a lot of examples of "stacked" greenhouses where multiple layers of plants are above and below each other, with the sun-loving crops closer to the window, and the shade-tolerant plants beneath them. I may presume effective growing areas of 20m2 for the 2.5m and 60m2 for the 3.75m since that would support 1 and 3 kerbals, respectively. At those sizes, you'd see the following in TAC-LS terms:

2.5m greenhouse

• Food production of 6L per day
• O2 production of 32.6L per day
• CO2 reduction of 31.8L per day
• Negligible water production / consumption (it stays in balance, for the most part)
• If the shutters are closed, or you're not facing the sun, power consumption of 68.6 EC/s (to produce a 27.4 EC/s equivalent of light)

If supporting a single kerbal, the 2.5m greenhouse would produce 100% of the food and 20% of the oxygen for 1 kerbal. Values for the 3.75m greenhouse would be 3x that.

Most current KSP greenhouses are seriously OP compared to more "realistic" ones, with a far lower EC consumption. To be fair, though, EC consumption is very low when the shutters are open and the unit is facing the sun in Kerbin's orbit. Not so much when out near Jool.

[DStaal]

RoverDude actually has a spreadsheet, available on a link from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oqO3xbswk  (which is a guide to using it).  The spreadsheet isn't fully current I believe, but there haven't been any major rebalances since it came out.

As for the amount of area: Any space-going greenhouse is going to be multi-level hydroponics, likely with lights for each level.  There's a decent discussion on Spacedock about which crops to grow, based on growing volume, yield per unit time, nutritional value, and other utility.  No decisions are clear, but wheat and corn are unlikely due to their height - they'd take a lot of space, where there are plenty of other choices where you could grow two or three sets of crops in the same volume.  (Honestly, ZZZ's models are gorgeous - but unrealistic.)

 

[panarchist]

16 hours ago, DStaal said:

RoverDude actually has a spreadsheet, available on a link from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oqO3xbswk  (which is a guide to using it).  The spreadsheet isn't fully current I believe, but there haven't been any major rebalances since it came out.

As for the amount of area: Any space-going greenhouse is going to be multi-level hydroponics, likely with lights for each level.  There's a decent discussion on Spacedock about which crops to grow, based on growing volume, yield per unit time, nutritional value, and other utility.  No decisions are clear, but wheat and corn are unlikely due to their height - they'd take a lot of space, where there are plenty of other choices where you could grow two or three sets of crops in the same volume.  (Honestly, ZZZ's models are gorgeous - but unrealistic.)

 

and a YouTube video on how to use it - which I still can't entirely figure out. It's going to end up pretty close to the Nom-o-matic 25000 Inline, simply because I need a stake in the ground to actually do a release.

multi-level hydroponics - that makes sense, but it's not a given. "Pure" hydroponics in zero-g is unlikely, substrates that wick water and nutrients are one of several options. I haven't read up on it in the last year or two, but I researched it pretty extensively in the past. As for actual crops, I'm happy to leave those unspecified. Kerbals might be growing an analogue to Earth crops that is more of less productive, etc - I want a nod towards realism, but not actual realism to the Nth degree - the RO folks can MM patch it to their heart's content.

Right now, I am trying to remember how converters work, especially given that I need to change "light" to EC and all that. I'm hoping to actually have this posted in the next week or so, and start writing up some of my save game storyline and other things I intended to do a long time ago - assuming I don't get sucked back into Train Simulator, American Truck Simulator, or GTA / Red Dead Redemption. Or just plain work, for that matter.

[DStaal]

3 minutes ago, panarchist said:

multi-level hydroponics - that makes sense, but it's not a given. "Pure" hydroponics in zero-g is unlikely, substrates that wick water and nutrients are one of several options. I haven't read up on it in the last year or two, but I researched it pretty extensively in the past. As for actual crops, I'm happy to leave those unspecified. Kerbals might be growing an analogue to Earth crops that is more of less productive, etc - I want a nod towards realism, but not actual realism to the Nth degree - the RO folks can MM patch it to their heart's content.

No problem - I wasn't trying to push you towards working it out precisely realistically.  I was more going 'this is more complexity than we're likely to want, just use volume like everyone else.' 

[theJesuit]

On 11/2/2018 at 2:42 PM, panarchist said:

TAC-LS parameters are mostly taken from NASA's 2015 Baseline doc for Advanced Life Support: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20150002905.pdf

Kerbalism's numbers are fairly aligned with TACLS currently.  @Gordon Dry can help.  

Also, congrats on starting a family. Welcome back to the forums!

Am keen to know the unnamed project that the IVA is for.

Peace.

[panarchist]

On 11/2/2018 at 12:13 PM, DStaal said:

No problem - I wasn't trying to push you towards working it out precisely realistically.  I was more going 'this is more complexity than we're likely to want, just use volume like everyone else.' 

Absolutely. It's all "under the hood" - nothing anyone's going to see, unless they want to look in this thread and understand why I picked the numbers I picked.

 

On 11/3/2018 at 2:32 AM, theJesuit said:

Kerbalism's numbers are fairly aligned with TACLS currently.  @Gordon Dry can help.  

Also, congrats on starting a family. Welcome back to the forums!

Am keen to know the unnamed project that the IVA is for.

Peace.

Ok, that's good to know. Kerbalism LOOKS really cool, but I haven't taken the time to really play with it. There are parts of it I really, really love, but like my other favorite mods, it doesn't play well with others. Or at least, not with MKS and WildBlue, which is more the point. So I just maintain 3 copies of KSP.

Right now, I am trying to learn how to create IVAs with MOARDV's RPM Replacement. It might be to build some stock IVAs, and possibly eventually one for this greenhouse. It's a long-term project, and my day job is really impinging on my time for that at the moment.

 

[theJesuit]

28 minutes ago, panarchist said:

Right now, I am trying to learn how to create IVAs with MOARDV's RPM Replacement. It might be to build some stock IVAs,

Awesome.  Everytime I try I get lost and pass it over - gosh darn it Jim I'm a priest not a coder nor an artist!  An IVA in the greenhouse would be awesome!

I'd like to request an IVA for the landercans to have a single seat added to the Mk1 esp.  but also the Mk2 as well

Just a wee suggestion.

Pace.