comnet kerbol

[bjerrang]

So , i got a working comnet on all planets. 

But the signal strength from jool and eeloo are abit weak to kerbin

Im looking for a good kerbol altitude to improve this and , how many sattelittes do i need in this orbit.

I had an idea og 50gM (just outside dres) 4 satellites and and 50gM to 66.123gM as the injection to correct 4 sattelite setup.

[Guest]

First off, the weak signal strength has no gameplay effect at all. Any signal works as well. So if you want to do this, it falls under the "because I want to" category -- like most of KSP actually. And as projects go, this one sounds like a fun one.

I don't think the altitude is all that important actually, as the problem is at its most acute when Jool/Eeloo and Kerbin are in opposition (i.e., with Kerbol between them). So a ring of evenly-spaced 100G relays anywhere between Kerbin and Jool should sort this out nicely. I'd go with six. 

That said, I think your craft will still go for the most direct link to KSC they can get, so it's likely your CommNet will show the first hop to the nearest relay and the second hop from the relay to Kerbin, even if the second hop is at weaker signal strength than it would have been to make more hops.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

+1 to everything @Brikoleur said.

As a small addendum, I think signal strength does matter in one very obscure instance, at least according to the wiki; I've never tested it myself. (And we all know the Wiki is full of outdated and/or flat out wrong info) Anyone have any experience with this, and whether it's true or not? I'm curious.

Science Transmission

Signal strength has no bearing on transmitting science directly to the KSC, but vessels transmitting through a relay will gain a 40% bonus to the data transmitted (to a maximum of 100% value). For example, a Gravity Scan from low Jool orbit would give 90*0.4=35 Science if transmitted directly, but if bounced through a relay with an overall strength of 100% would give 90*0.4*1.4=50.4 Science. This bonus decreases non-linearly with signal strength.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Guest]

I think it does at that. I'm transmitting stuff back from Jool all the time and the numbers are... odd. I believe it's the relay bonus in action.

(I haven't been working to optimise it because there's so much Science to have anyway and I don't want to max out my tech tree too soon...)

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

39 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

+1 to everything @Brikoleur said.

As a small addendum, I think signal strength does matter in one very obscure instance, at least according to the wiki; I've never tested it myself. (And we all know the Wiki is full of outdated and/or flat out wrong info) Anyone have any experience with this, and whether it's true or not? I'm curious.

Science Transmission

Signal strength has no bearing on transmitting science directly to the KSC, but vessels transmitting through a relay will gain a 40% bonus to the data transmitted (to a maximum of 100% value). For example, a Gravity Scan from low Jool orbit would give 90*0.4=35 Science if transmitted directly, but if bounced through a relay with an overall strength of 100% would give 90*0.4*1.4=50.4 Science. This bonus decreases non-linearly with signal strength.

Whoa. Great dig. I had no idea. I usually only transmit crew reports (because you can only hold one per capsule, obviously), and bring everything else back, so I never really noticed. Forty percent is nothin' to sneeze at. I'll definitely keep that in mind from now on.

[bjerrang]

thnx

Edited January 23, 2018 by bjerrang

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

(because you can only hold one per capsule, obviously)

Actually, just one minor correction:  the capsule can hold as many crew reports as you want.  It just takes a simple little trick. 

All you need to do is:

1. Send out an EVA kerbal.
2. Click on the capsule to say "remove data".
3. Board the capsule again (which puts all the data back into the capsule).
4. Result:  the capsule's "crew report" slot is now empty, and ready to gather another report.

Technical reasons why this works in a spoiler section, for the curious.

Spoiler

• The way the programming modules on the part are designed, capsule has two places it can store data:  1. a "crew report" slot, which is where the crew report goes when you generate it; and, 2. a bottomless pit where all science reports are stored.
• #1 can only hold one crew report.  Either it's full, or it's empty, and that's that.
• #2 can hold an infinite number of science results of any type (including crew reports), as long as they're "unique" (can't be two of the exact same report).
• When your EVA kerbal pulls science out of the capsule, they grab everything out of #1 and #2.
• When the kerbal re-boards the capsule... everything they're carrying gets put into #2 (including the crew report they just pulled out of #1).

So the net result of this little operation is to move the crew report out of #1 and into #2, thus freeing up #1 to take more reports.

Also, of course, if you have any parts on your ship with the "science storage" functionality-- such as the "science box" part, or the largest probe cores-- then their "Gather All" action will grab crew reports, too, and will similarly stack crew reports, thus saving you the need to do the little dance with the EVA kerbal.

 

Now, in practice, the fact that you can do this often doesn't really matter, because in my experience there's usually no reason not to go ahead and transmit the crew report immediately.

However, once in a while, the ability to "stack" crew reports like this can be useful.  Some examples where storing up multiple crew reports can come in handy:

• if it's early in career and you don't have good antennas and you're out exploring somewhere you can't transmit from, yet
• if you're exploring an area that's on the back side of a planet or moon where you don't have relay coverage yet, and you're visiting multiple biomes, and you want to grab lots of reports before you go back to where you can transmit them
• if you're low on battery power and need to wait until you've got more favorable conditions (e.g. more-direct sunlight to recharge)
• if you're an idiot like me and forgot to put an antenna on the darn ship

 

[bjerrang]

Could not find a way to easy put on 6 satelites , but i managed 5. This operation will take some years to complete.

Ended up with this Altitudes 47 500 000 000 (to avoid Dres) 

Injection 59 845 727 356,8 and 276dV on the injection itself. From kerbin  to those altitudes you need close to 4000dV

Had to put the orbit outside Dres since the furthes distance to eeloo is marginal inside of dres. 

Edited January 23, 2018 by bjerrang

[TheFlyingKerman]

On ‎1‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 8:51 PM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Science Transmission

Signal strength has no bearing on transmitting science directly to the KSC, but vessels transmitting through a relay will gain a 40% bonus to the data transmitted (to a maximum of 100% value). For example, a Gravity Scan from low Jool orbit would give 90*0.4=35 Science if transmitted directly, but if bounced through a relay with an overall strength of 100% would give 90*0.4*1.4=50.4 Science. This bonus decreases non-linearly with signal strength.

You get the bonus as long as the signal strength is good. You get 40% bonus if the strength is above 83%, the bonus goes down quickly to 29% with 81% strength.

On ‎1‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 1:09 AM, bjerrang said:

Could not find a way to easy put on 6 satelites , but i managed 5. This operation will take some years to complete.

Ended up with this Altitudes 47 500 000 000 (to avoid Dres) 

Injection 59 845 727 356,8 and 276dV on the injection itself. From kerbin  to those altitudes you need close to 4000dV

Had to put the orbit outside Dres since the furthes distance to eeloo is marginal inside of dres. 

Not sure if this works. You get OK connection between your relay ring and KSC, but the connection between RA-100's aren't that strong.  A even simpler solution is a bigger relay at Kerbin orbit.

 

[Hodari]

On 1/23/2018 at 10:59 AM, Snark said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Now, in practice, the fact that you can do this often doesn't really matter, because in my experience there's usually no reason not to go ahead and transmit the crew report immediately.

However, once in a while, the ability to "stack" crew reports like this can be useful.  Some examples where storing up multiple crew reports can come in handy:

• if it's early in career and you don't have good antennas and you're out exploring somewhere you can't transmit from, yet
• if you're exploring an area that's on the back side of a planet or moon where you don't have relay coverage yet, and you're visiting multiple biomes, and you want to grab lots of reports before you go back to where you can transmit them
• if you're low on battery power and need to wait until you've got more favorable conditions (e.g. more-direct sunlight to recharge)
• if you're an idiot like me and forgot to put an antenna on the darn ship

 

For me, it's mostly my very first mission or two where I don't even have batteries yet, so at best I could only transmit one report. I'll grab the report from launchpad, EVA, get the EVA report and crew report(and any other experiments I have available, depending on what tech tree mods I'm running), then launch and get that crew report, land/splashdown, EVA, grab reports again, and one last crew report from there.

Also, sometimes I won't even bother with an antenna on a piloted mission since he can just return all the science back with him anyway.  Only reason to put on one at that point is realism.