KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[danielboro]

7 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

Just checked and solid core has a 1 year 80 day lifespan with its internal generator active (1% idle power even with no real need for EC/MJ)

 

this has to be new
my ship is reporting 1y and 300d left of activity

edit
after looking at screens shot from last night i see the reported life going from 6 days at 100% trust to 2000y wen ideling.
but most of the time its on 1y 400+ days

Edited July 26, 2017 by danielboro

[BlackMoons]

5 minutes ago, danielboro said:

this has to be new
my ship is reporting 1y and 300d left of activity

edit
after looking at screens shot from last night i see the reported life going from 6 days at 100% trust to 2000y wen ideling.
but most of the time its on 1y 400+ days

Yes. Most of them will shut off after the 1st one fulfills any 'need'. Turn all the generators off and they will go to inf life when idle.

[danielboro]

4 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

Yes. Most of them will shut off after the 1st one fulfills any 'need'. Turn all the generators off and they will go to inf life when idle.

but still the unbalancing of trust is a problem
i think that by default all trust from same type suld be kept balanced
like i mentioned, my TTNL has been working for ~ a year and the unbalance only stated in the last 10 days

[FreeThinker]

25 minutes ago, danielboro said:

this ship has 2 gigantors and 4 fuel cells (using a kos script to start them wen needed)
any 1 of them can make inaf EC to run it
but the real problem is the 4 reactors are not balanced.
theirs a favored for producing power and this reactor loses trust do to accumulated Ac
then the ship is unbalanced that can get up to 140KN on one side and 110KN on the second that ~ 20%. lots of turq

They are balanced because the thermal electric power is supposed to run on the passive power output of the reactor, which should always be the same when idle. For some reason on reactor correctly created actinides  while the other didn't, that a bug not a missing feature

[danielboro]

1 minute ago, FreeThinker said:

They are balanced because the thermal electric power is supposed to run on the passive power output of the reactor, which should always be the same when idle. For some reason on reactor correctly created actinides  while the other didn't, that a bug not a missing feature

its not 1
every reactor makes a different amount
i didnt show it in the pic on the 2 extrims but non of the 4 reactors had the same amount of actinides 

[FreeThinker]

41 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

Ok but what is the difference in game? What uses only reaction rate instead of reaction*power rate?

2

Well Power Rate indirectly affect how much power every gram produces, while Reaction rate  only affect reactor maximum power output a second

For reample Full D-D fusion  means the reaction of Deuterium with itself and all subsequent reactor from it production. This produces a lot of enenergy, (1.27)  Because this will trequire multiple reactions, it reaction rate is only half

Edited July 26, 2017 by FreeThinker

[BlackMoons]

Ah, So is total fuel consumption for a mode FuelPerMW / Power Rate?

 

Edited July 26, 2017 by BlackMoons

[FreeThinker]

2 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

Ah, So is total fuel consumption for a mode FuelPerMW / Power Rate?

 

Yes something like that, there are a whole bunch of other factors which affect it as well, but those are the main ones

[BlackMoons]

So if I have this right, Proton-Nitrogen-15 takes 145e-12kg per MW and Deuterium-lithium6 is as little as 1.8e-12kg per MW?

[FreeThinker]

10 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Found a fun lifehack: If you remove the lithium from your fusion reactors, they no longer produce any thermal power but instead produce 100% charged particle output like an tri-alpha reactor.

Note: this does not increase the output of your reactors in CP, it merely eliminates the thermal output so you won't overheat if your using efficient CP power generation.

True, but you are now also spewing out nasty neutrons through your vessel, which will irritate your reactor, causing it to become neutron embrittlement at a much higher rate  which will reduce the overall power output and therefore the value of your reactor

Edited July 26, 2017 by FreeThinker

[BlackMoons]

Hu, Bug confirmed, Multiple solid Core nuclear engines on a ship do not load share properly:

Note 3 reactors at 1.04% and one at 1.19%

Turning that 1.19% reactor off causes one other reactor to increase in output slightly.

Seems to me they should either load share equally, or only 1 should be idling at all.

Still, turning off all the generators in your solid core engines will fix it, because then they idle at 0% as expected.

[FreeThinker]

2 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

Hu, Bug confirmed, Multiple solid Core nuclear engines on a ship do not load share properly:

Note 3 reactors at 1.04% and one at 1.19%

Turning that 1.19% reactor off causes one other reactor to increase in output slightly.

Seems to me they should either load share equally, or only 1 should be idling at all.

Still, turning off all the generators in your solid core engines will fix it, because then they idle at 0% as expected.

This will not explain the huge difference. 1.04 is the idle processing, which should work well correctly at real time. I suspect something goes wrong at startup when it need to simulate fuel consumption while not loaded

[BlackMoons]

2 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

This will not explain the huge difference. 1.04 is the idle processing, which should work well correctly at real time. I suspect something goes wrong at startup when it need to simulate fuel consumption while not loaded

Ah true. Oddly enough changing the power priorities and even putting another molten salt reactor with a priority 1 electric generator on it does not stop the idle throttle usage for solid cores either.

 

 

[BlackMoons]

Uh, SUPER strange, I tried my test rig with some hydrogen above it and throttled the engines up.

Each Solid Core Nuclear Engine throttles up one at a time..!

Ie, 12% throttle with 4 reactors = 1 reactor at 50%, rest at 1.04%

50% throttle = 2 reactors at 100%, 2 at 1.04%

88% throttle = 3 reactors at 100% 1 at 50%

Really not what I expected at all! Basically impossable to fly at anything but 0% or 100% throttle.

Worse yet, they throttle up and down in sequence too when you change the throttle from 0% to 100% instantly.

Edited July 26, 2017 by BlackMoons

[danielboro]

Just now, BlackMoons said:

Uh, SUPER strange, I tried my test rig with some hydrogen above it and throttled the engines up.

Each Solid Core Nuclear Engine throttles up one at a time..!

Ie, 12% throttle with 4 reactors = 1 reactor at 50%, rest at 1.04%

50% throttle = 2 reactors at 100%, 2 at 1.04%

88% throttle = 3 reactors at 100% 1 at 50%

Really not what I expected at all!

this can be seen in the vid i made for freethinker  15 days ago

[BlackMoons]

2 minutes ago, danielboro said:

this can be seen in the vid i made for freethinker  15 days ago

Yea, but now the author can confirm it with a min parts vehicle. Just put a tiny tank of hydrogen on top of that (or a huge one to keep it from lifting off) and see what happens when you slowly raise the throttle with all 4 engine windows open.

These are also all fresh engines with no fuel buildup/loss. Might be in addition to another bug your suffering from (unequal depleted fuel buildup)

Edited July 26, 2017 by BlackMoons

[FreeThinker]

12 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Proton-Lithium6 requires 2.177E-12 hydrogen and 13E-12 lithium6 per MW. thats a fair bit but lithium 6 is IMO easy to get.. Sadly only has 0.6 reaction rate and 0.227 power multiplier. just under half of that fuel mass, turns into HE3

2

The He3 output is the whole reason for adding it, it's the only way of artificially creating He3 aneutronic, meaning you can do it for a long time without damaging the reactor

12 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

The only cycles over 61% max power are:

Deuterium-Tritium 100% (produces neutrons and mainly heat)

Deuterium-Lithium6 95%

Deuterium-Helium3 88%

SP Helium3-Deuterium 84%

Proton-Lithium7 83%

 

Don't forget that fusion also requires maintenance power, which becomes a lot higher with more advanced fusion modes

A significant part of power will be consumed by the reactor itself. therefore you need to look at the net result which differs depending on your tech level as fusion reactor become more efficient after more fusion technologies are unlocked

For example. at first sight, Deuterium-Lithium6  may appear to be more powerful than D-He3 but because it has high maintenance power, its effective net power is lower. Perhaps someone should make a table of effective power vs tech unlocked.

Edited July 26, 2017 by FreeThinker

[DrScarlett]

16 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Well I could not reproduce with this ship, docking/undocking

Perhaps you can send me a  simple vessel where the problem occurs:

I do have an idea why it might occur, could you test if the problem also occurs with this alpha of KSPIE 1.15

Hi @FreeThinker,

I have experienced this very problem several times before in 1.3. I undock, my reactor keeps running but provides 0 MJ, if it is fusion, apparently its self maintenance power keeps running. The generator keeps running, but there is no current anymore. If I save and reopen, power comes back. Here is my latest example.

After undock:

How can I help you figure this out?

EDIT: I purposely saved the game before decoupling, and just after decoupling. Obviously the one after doesn't help, because if I load that, the problem is gone. But now it gets worse: when I load the before save, and decouple, the problem does not occur. I cannot reproduce it. Those are the worst....

EDIT2: When I take a save earlier (before I dock the original craft, which is basically a bunch of huge AM containers with an engine part, containing the tri-aleph and kerbstein, that I can decouple as a segment), dock the craft and then undock the engine/reactor part - presto problem occurs. Looks reproducible. Same behavior on the extra save just before undocking. When I reload that, undock the engine section, everything behaves as normal. I will try the before docking scenario again to see if I can truly reproduce it.

Edited July 26, 2017 by DrScarlett

[danielboro]

32 minutes ago, DrScarlett said:

Hi @FreeThinker,

I have experienced this very problem several times before in 1.3. I undock, my reactor keeps running but provides 0 MJ, if it is fusion, apparently its self maintenance power keeps running. The generator keeps running, but there is no current anymore. If I save and reopen, power comes back. Here is my latest example.

After undock:

How can I help you figure this out?

EDIT: I purposely saved the game before decoupling, and just after decoupling. Obviously the one after doesn't help, because if I load that, the problem is gone. But now it gets worse: when I load the before save, and decouple, the problem does not occur. I cannot reproduce it. Those are the worst....

if wen you load the save you get to KSC and then go to the ship try this

make a copy of the save.
edit it and change

    scene = 5

to

    scene = 7

try the new save (i usually change the name to quicksave for east F9 load)
if its a quicksave try the revers

[DrScarlett]

@danielboro: Read me second edit above. What is this save edit supposed to accomplish, just to understand better?

[danielboro]

a 5 will get you to the KSC on load

a 7 will get you to the ship on load

if a sicean change resets something i hope one of them will prevent or make the reset and make it reproducible

[DrScarlett]

I am always using named quick saves, never go via KFC. But anyway, I can now reproduce it. I just take an earlier save, dock the craft, undock the engine portion of the craft that has the reactor, and power goes dead. Tried it 4 times. However if I load a save where the craft is already docked, the error doesn't occur. But since I have a surefire way of reproducing the error, I think I am good for now. 

@danielboro Thank you for the suggestion anyway!

Edited July 26, 2017 by DrScarlett

[BlackMoons]

Cool, the plasma nozzle increases in max thrust for a given amount of input power with size (by about 20% per size), and still uses 'thermal power' from an engine.

This is much more how id like the thermal nozzles to act. More nozzle weight/size should make them more efficient or able to handle more power.. something that makes bigger=better till the weight and cost is too much. Im not entirely thrilled at the idea of having to match them with reactor size since 5m+ nozzles are insanely heavy/expensive.

Sadly mated with 4.5GW Mk2 MFC spherical reactor only resulted in 400~600KN but at a blistering 2800ISP with methane, And more like 200~300KN if you didn't have enough other power sources for fusion maintenance. (Seems that output thrust is nonlinear with throttle?)

Also, Instantly exploded at insane temp when accidentally used in atmosphere.. don't do that. Good to know something has an explosion failure mode though! I like the odd thing that just blows up when you do something really stupid.

Hmm, very nonlinear. 1MJ = 60KN, 2MJ = 229KN, 3MJ = 500KN, 3.5MJ = 670KN with 5m nozzle and 5m MK2 MFC.

Must.. get.. MORE POWER.

 

Also seems like charged particle generators don't actually have to be directly attached to a powerplant to work properly. You can connect them to a thermal generator too.

ie, you can have:

Nozzle<-Reactor->ThermalGenerator->ChargedParticle Generator and they all work!

Edited July 26, 2017 by BlackMoons

[BlackMoons]

Minor Bug: the Stellarator fusion reactors description is cut off at "which is havier but" as there is a new line in the description in the config file. Also should be 'heavier'.

Edited July 26, 2017 by BlackMoons

[danielboro]

is ther any thing i can do to restore the solid core (in game)
1% of acthinids drops the trust by ~30%
what is the affect curve of the acthinids on trust (thermal power?)