[1.12.5] Grannus Expansion Pack [v1.2.8] [10 May 2022]

[darwinpatrick]

@OhioBob New planets? Interesting. I personally like how there's no analog for Venus or Mars, it feels very alien. However, coming from GPP, there's much less opportunity to be clever- let me explain with a little story. In GPP, I once had fuel issues coming back from Gauss. I was going too fast to safely make it to Gael without burning up, so I played around with maneuvers until I had just barely enough fuel to fly by Tellumo and then Gael in order to safely bleed off enough speed that I could land my return capsule on Niven, where I already had the mission architecture in orbit to be able to pick them up from the surface and take them home. It was awesome. Why do I mention this?

Because I love that sort of thing and it's more difficult with GEP Primary. Any system with so few bodies has much less opportunity to be, in this way, clever. It's much more numbers-and-math than gravity pinball. And I find myself liking it that way. It works for GEP.

For such a small system it's extremely well balanced and it highlights a different way to play the game. I'm really glad it's still being worked on but honestly I would be cautious adding new planets. If I may make suggestions, what I would do instead is add content that better lines up with how this pack is laid out. In the 3700 delta-v "void" between Nodens and Sirona what I would consider adding is two or (maybe three) "asteroid" planets that comprise an asteroid belt. Little dwarf planets that have asteroids around them and in nearby orbits to them. Think Pallas and Vesta analogs versus one big Dres. This region would provide a physical stepping stone to Sirona that provides its own opportunities for mining and exploration.

Take this with a grain of salt, this is just what I feel would add a lot playwise while keeping its style as a system. I'll provide feedback on Taranis once I make it there.

P.S. How would Cernunnos look with Chariklo rings like this? 

Edited November 15, 2019 by darwinpatrick
Slight rewording of construtive criticism

[OhioBob]

I hadn't considered adding anymore rings but I won't rule it out.  Cernunnos is the planet that has changed the most in the next update.  It has a completely new color map.  I've really struggled making it a color that I like.  I changed it once already and now again.  I think I'm finally finished messing with it.

[OhioBob]

UPDATE

Version 1.0.2

Changelog

• Added procedural craters to eight celestial bodies.
• Exported updated color and normal maps.
• Completely reworked Cernunnos' color map.
• Reworked Taranis' ocean (coastline and color).
• Revised Taranis' biome map (shores).
• Lowered Belisama's contrast and saturation.
• Added subtle coloration to Damona.
• Revised ScaledVersion and PQS fadeStart/End altitudes.
• Disabled useOnDemandBiomes.
• Updated CelestialBodies.pdf.

Please be advised that since procedural craters have been added to most bodies, this update has the potential to cause problems with existing saves.  Any landed vessels, bases, or surface infrastructure could be damaged or destroyed by changes in the surrounding terrain.

See opening post for download link and instructions.

 

Edited November 15, 2019 by OhioBob

[darwinpatrick]

I'm currently running a save but I might plug the new Cernunnos into my current version if that would work. Haven't been at all yet, excited to see what's new!

[OhioBob]

4 minutes ago, darwinpatrick said:

I'm currently running a save but I might plug the new Cernunnos into my current version if that would work. Haven't been at all yet, excited to see what's new!

The only bodies whose surfaces are completely unchanged are Nodens and Airmed.  The others I thought looked better by scattering some fresh craters around their surfaces.  Unless you have something landed on one of the bodies that got new craters, your save should be fine.  And even if you do have something landed there, it may still be OK.  There's just a possibility that something could be damaged by a crater being in a location where previously there wasn't one.

[darwinpatrick]

@OhioBob Alright, thanks. I'll chance it with my surface probes.

Unrelated: I scanned Airmed from orbit and found no ore. I'm playing hard mode if that's significant but it was just quite surprising to find zero ore on an entire moon.

[OhioBob]

1 hour ago, darwinpatrick said:

Unrelated: I scanned Airmed from orbit and found no ore. I'm playing hard mode if that's significant but it was just quite surprising to find zero ore on an entire moon.

That just sounds like bad luck, unless something broke since I set it up originally.  I haven't check it in a very long time so I honestly don't know if it's working or not.

GEP has custom resource configs for all the bodies to try to make things more realistic than just random chance.  Ore should be more likely and abundant on inner rocky bodies than on icy outer bodies.  On Airmed, each biome (except for poles) should have a 60% chance of ore being present in a concentration of somewhere between 1% and 4%.  To have none is not impossible, but it's very unlikely considering it has 8 biomes that could potentially have ore.

I don't know how hard mode effects those percentages.  If significantly reduced, that could explain your bad luck.

Edited November 15, 2019 by OhioBob

[darwinpatrick]

@OhioBob From the wiki:

"The abundance of ore in a biome is determined by two "coin flips" -- ie. random number draws. The first is based on your "resource abundance" slider. Each biome on every celestial body has a "1 minus this percentage" chance of having no ore at all. If that first chance passes, then there is a second coin flip to determine the average ore concentration in the biome. This second chance is based on your game difficulty level. It is important to understand that this abundance can easily also end up "less than zero" -- so in a hard game, with a 50% resource abundance setting, you may still only end up with ore in 25% of the biomes on all the celestial bodies together."

This lines up with the five places I've scanned so far. On my save, Nodens has ore only in the seas and ice caps, Belisama only in the temperate lowlands, and the other three (Sirona's moons) have ore in one or two biomes except for Airmed which has zero.

[OhioBob]

@darwinpatrick, since you're getting ore in some places, it seems the system is working at least.  Overall I went pretty skimpy on the resource allocation in GEP.  Maybe too much so.  It's something I figured might need fine tuning to get it right.  But I've never received any feedback on it one way or the other.  I don't really play the game that much anymore, and when I do I rarely so anything with resources.  So if tweaking is needed I wouldn't know about it unless somebody tells me.

[darwinpatrick]

52 minutes ago, OhioBob said:

@darwinpatrick, since you're getting ore in some places, it seems the system is working at least.  Overall I went pretty skimpy on the resource allocation in GEP.  Maybe too much so.  It's something I figured might need fine tuning to get it right.  But I've never received any feedback on it one way or the other.  I don't really play the game that much anymore, and when I do I rarely so anything with resources.  So if tweaking is needed I wouldn't know about it unless somebody tells me.

That's why I'm in support of inscreasing the availability of asteroids in this pack to compensate. I notice a belt out by Cernunnos, but why not move the belt in between Nodens and Sirona where it's more useful? 

[OhioBob]

6 minutes ago, darwinpatrick said:

That's why I'm in support of inscreasing the availability of asteroids in this pack to compensate. I notice a belt out by Cernunnos, but why not move the belt in between Nodens and Sirona where it's more useful? 

I don't plan to move the existing belt, but I might add a new one.  Between Nodens and Sirona was one of the places I was thinking about adding a new planet.  Maybe I can make it a small ore/metal rich dwarf planet within an asteroid belt (as you suggest).

[OhioBob]

FYI, below are the current settings for ore.  I assume these are for normal settings, but I really don't know.

Taranis     all biomes 70% chance, 2-8% abundance

Nodens      all biomes except tundra and ice caps 70% chance, 1.8-7.2% abundance
            tundra 70% chance, 0.9-3.6% abundance
            ice caps 0% chance

Belisama    all biomes 70% chance, 1.9-7.6% abundance

Airmed      all biomes except poles 60% chance, 1-4% abundance
            poles 0% chance

Brovo       all biomes except poles 60% chance, 1.4-5.6% abundance
            poles 0% chance

Damona      all biomes except poles 60% chance, 1-4% abundance
            poles 0% chance

Epona       all biomes except poles 50% chance, 0.2-0.8% abundance
            poles 0% chance

Rosmerta    all biomes except poles 50% chance, 0.2-0.8% abundance
            poles 0% chance

RAB-58E     all biomes except poles 50% chance, 0.2-0.8% abundance
            poles 0% chance

Cernunnos   all biomes 0% chance

Edit:  The above numbers are no longer valid since version 1.1.0

Edited December 3, 2019 by OhioBob

[darwinpatrick]

47 minutes ago, OhioBob said:

I don't plan to move the existing belt, but I might add a new one.  Between Nodens and Sirona was one of the places I was thinking about adding a new planet.  Maybe I can make it a small ore/metal rich dwarf planet within an asteroid belt (as you suggest).

Yea, I like that. A little Pallas sort of thing. Quite dense I'd imagine

[darwinpatrick]

@OhioBob Am I correct in my assumption that there is no ore on Cernunnos at all?

[OhioBob]

1 hour ago, darwinpatrick said:

@OhioBob Am I correct in my assumption that there is no ore on Cernunnos at all?

According to the configs, yes.

I probably need to reconsider the distribution of ore.  I set up resources with Community Resource Pack in mind.  So while Cernunnos is scarce in some resources (ore, minerals, metals, etc.) it is rich in other resources (water, nitrogen, methane, etc.).  But if one is just playing stock without any other resource mods, then ore becomes a proxy for everything.  It probably needs to exist in reasonable abundances on all bodies.
 

Edited November 16, 2019 by OhioBob

[darwinpatrick]

@OhioBob I'm intrigued by the idea of there being no ore on Cernunnos, but there should be ore somewhere nearby- I'm coming back to my Charilko-like ring idea: perhaps asteroids can spawn in the thin gap between the two bands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Chariklo

This would frankly just be really neat to have IMO. Seems like a fair trade off for the work required to get there and the lack of ore on the surface.

[OhioBob]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to redo the ore distribution and abundance.  Not don't have any particular plan in place yet, but it definitely needs revision.  All the CRP resources I'm leaving as is.

BTW, do you have a good screenshots of your travels so far?

[darwinpatrick]

5 minutes ago, OhioBob said:

I'm pretty sure I'm going to redo the ore distribution and abundance.  Not don't have any particular plan in place yet, but it definitely needs revision.  All the CRP resources I'm leaving as is.

BTW, do you have a good screenshots of your travels so far?

Landed a scientific base on Damona (my first manned landing outside of Nodens's SOI) and managed to capture this out the window

[darwinpatrick]

Today after a short hiatus I returned to colonizing the Grannus system. Put a few probes around the Epona system in preparation for Rosmerta mining and Kerballed activities. But the mission to Airmed and Brovo was a little more excting. It was the first flags and footsteps on both worlds.

I went to Airmed first with the validated reasoning being that getting to Brovo via aerobraking in its atmosphere would be easier and safer that way.

That worked exactly as planned! In case you were curious, the thing off to the side is an extra fuel tank with airbrakes and drogue chutes that I set to drain first to lower the center of mass and keep the craft stable during descent. The little things below the tanks are in case I came down too fast- they sit below the engine and would prevent it from being destroyed. Luckily that was not a problem.

We're currently sitting in low Brovo orbit with 1900 m/s left. I would like to bring the vessel home intact but that might not be possible. We'll probably just send a rescue. Then on to Epona!

Edited November 23, 2019 by darwinpatrick

[darwinpatrick]

Today was a good day. After a week of this "Epona+" mission all three Kerbals are home safe, with an imprtant milestone reached. The mission involved sending a modified Brovo lander to Rosmerta orbit followed by a miner. I also took a contract to dig up 3000 ore from Rosmerta and land it on Epona, so I factored that into my construction. The following picture is how the miner fuels both itself and the lander-

It's not crazy if it works, right? I fueled like this four times between arrival, departure, and the landings on RAB-58E and Epona.

The Brovo lander's top bit was given a probe core that allowed it to be removed so the miner could dock with it when it was needed. But, like at Brovo, it came in handy keeping the lander straight during descent. I also swapped the Poodle for a Vector. So it's the Epona lander now, but it made indepenent landings on four worlds that mission. Yes, four.

Basically, after it was done with Epona and fully fueled I sent it to the dwarf planet Cernunnos to hang out for a while. I didn't have a return plan as it was so this worked out nicely, because I was able to send a craft that got to Cernunnos by mining a nice class E rock called SFS-013 near Sirona. This also gave the Epona lander more than enough fuel to get the surface of Cernunnos and back. From there, I transferred the crew to the returner.

Tiny problem: the heatshield in there was completely ablated away from the heat of mining, despite my radiators. So that removes the fun and safe 7km/s fireball return option. I would have to slow down normally, but this would take a lot of fuel. Luckily, there's still a thousand tons of it locked up in asteroid SFS-013 near Sirona... I hopped back down and filled up again there. After that was over I had a comfortable amount of delta-v to get down into Nodens orbit and back home safe. 

So that's the milestone- flags and footprints on every world in the Grannus system! It's an incredibe achievement and it feels so good to have conquered every...

Right. Crap. Uh, let's see how this goes. Buckle up everyone!

Edited November 28, 2019 by darwinpatrick

[OhioBob]

I've got three more worlds created that I'll be adding to the next update.  So there will be more places to visit.  Not sure when I'll release it, but I'm getting close.

[darwinpatrick]

On 11/27/2019 at 8:55 PM, OhioBob said:

I've got three more worlds created that I'll be adding to the next update.  So there will be more places to visit.  Not sure when I'll release it, but I'm getting close.

Awesome! Can't wait! Really looking forward to what's been cooked up. I'm setting up solar infrastructure that should allow for a Taranis manned landing and return sometime today. In so doing I had a thought about scattering some sunspots on Grannus if that interests you. Purely visual but I think it would look cool.

[OhioBob]

21 minutes ago, darwinpatrick said:

Awesome! Can't wait! Really looking forward to what's been cooked up. I'm setting up solar infrastructure that should allow for a Taranis manned landing and return sometime today. In so doing I had a thought about scattering some sunspots on Grannus if that interests you. Purely visual but I think it would look cool.

I think I've got everything ready for the new release.  I'm just testing it out a little bit before I'm ready to make it official.  Nothing about the existing planets has changed, so I think you should be able to install it and get the new celestial bodies without messing up your current save.  I did revise the distribution of resources somewhat, but none of that should take effect until a new game is begun.

Grannus is the one body in GEP for which I didn't create the textures.  Grannus was created by Galileo for GPP (the star appears in GPP but without any planets).  I prefer that the appearance of Grannus remains the same in both GPP and GEP, and creative control over all the visuals in GPP I'm leaving in Galileo's hands.  For this reason I prefer not to do anything that changes the look of Grannus in GEP.

[OhioBob]

UPDATE

Version 1.1.0

Changelog

• Added three new celestial bodies - Toutatis, Sucellus and Caireen.
• Added an asteroid belt between Nodens and Sirona.
• Added GEP flags for all planets (artwork by JadeOfMaar).
• Added Δv map (artwork by JadeOfMaar), deleted Δv tables.
• Added Final Frontier ribbons for new celestial bodies.
• Added Epona clouds, misc. EVE updates.
• Added Sirona rimColorRamp.
• Added TweakChutes.cfg.
• Replaced Taranis' lava texture, revised ocean, updated color map.
• Replaced Brovo's terrain texture.
• Upgraded Brovo's color and normal maps to 4k.
• Fixed seams in several planet/moon textures.
• Increased maximum scatter density for boulders.
• Revised scatterer settings, new .half files.
• Revised Nodens' atmosphere (greater diurnal variation).
• Revised distribution of resources (ore and CRP).
• Revised Planet Shine and Distant Object colors.
• Revised Research Bodies difficulty settings.
• Updated configs for new celestial bodies as applicable.
• Updated CelestialBodies.pdf.
• Misc. other config changes, fixes, and house cleaning.

See opening post for download link and instructions.

Toutatis

Sucellus

Caireen

Δv Map

Flags (by @JadeOfMaar)

Edited December 7, 2019 by OhioBob

[OhioBob]

Known issue...

Toutatis is a tidally locked atmospheric planet, hot on one side and cold on the other.  At least that's the way it is designed.  Unfortunately temperatures aren't currently mapped correctly to the sun position vector.  This is because KSP includes a built-in offset that shifts the hottest time of day away from the sub-solar point to mid-afternoon, presuming a rapidly rotating body.  Stock KSP simply does not allow for tidally locked atmospheric planets.  Fortunately a solution to the problem has been found, which I hope will be included in the next version of Kopernicus.  And if not, I'll incorporated into GEP the necessary plugin to allow Toutatis to have the proper hot and cold hemispheres with which it was designed.

Sigma TweakChutes...

With the addition of Toutatis and its thin atmosphere, Sigma TweakChutes is recommended.  TweakChutes is a plugin that prevents parachutes from fully deploying unless both the minimum pressure to open and the deployment altitude have been satisfied.  In other words, a parachute won't full deploy unless it has first semi-deployed.  This adds difficulty to the game by preventing some parachutes from working where they really shouldn't.

Starting with GEP v1.1.5, TweakChutes is bundled with GEP.  It is no longer necessary to install it separately.

Edited May 5, 2020 by OhioBob