KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[Pixel of Life]

@FreeThinker Bug: When installing KSPI  through CKAN, it installs the wrong version of ModuleManager (3.0.1) which isn't compatible with certain MM 2.8.1 patches, resulting in errors with some of KSPI's mod compatibility patches (in my case, the Mk2 Expansion patches - some other configs may be broken as well):

[ERR 01:41:27.618] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_Precooler]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.619] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_AugmentedRocket]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.620] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_ESTOC]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.621] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_Jumpjet]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.622] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_MATTOCK]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.622] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_Ramjet]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.623] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_AtomicJet]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.624] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_SCRamjet]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.625] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_Turbojet]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.626] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_Turboprop]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

[ERR 01:41:27.626] [ModuleManager] Error - more than one pass specifier on a node: WarpPlugin/Patches/Mk2Expansion/@PART[M2X_HeavyVTOL]:AFTER[Mk2Expansion]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

Downgrading ModuleManager back to 2.8.1 appears to fix the problem. It seems that in order to use MM 3.0.1, the configs will have to be updated, but as a temporary solution, could you please change the ModuleManager dependency version to 2.8.1 on CKAN so we don't have to downgrade manually?

Edited December 14, 2017 by CaptainKorhonen
Bug also happens on KSP 1.3.1

[Fairin]

21 hours ago, ss8913 said:

Timberwinds are kind of weak, and I don't think they work in atmosphere at all.  By far the 2 best engines in KSPIE are the thermal ramjet nozzle and the kerbstein.  A sufficiently large ramjet nozzle (well, more than one) with sufficient plasma beam core antimatter reactors... 40,000 ton SSTOs are a thing.

2700 thrust ASL 600ish isp, on liquid fuel. something like 1k thrust and 1k isp on hydrogen but them fuel tanks are maaaaaassssive. - my career save isnt up to antimatter yet, i keep getting distracted before finishing the tech  tree by other things XD seeing the MM update maybe downgrading will put it back to work for me =)

[FreeThinker]

6 hours ago, Fairin said:

2700 thrust ASL 600ish isp, on liquid fuel. something like 1k thrust and 1k isp on hydrogen but them fuel tanks are maaaaaassssive. - my career save isnt up to antimatter yet, i keep getting distracted before finishing the tech  tree by other things XD seeing the MM update maybe downgrading will put it back to work for me =)

Have you tried the more advanced propellants like ammonia, methane and hydrazine?

[Uberns]

12 hours ago, helios1138 said:

Is there a more comprehensive guide to the updated beamed power system? I've looked around and everything is over 2 years old. My microwave network has 4 reactors and still producing laughably week results. My ships are only getting 1 MJ from the network and that's if they are lucky.

I managed to figure out the relay system on my own but I still need to know, what beam is best for powering from Kerbin, how many beams do I need and why are these end game engines producing less thrust than RCS jets?

 

PS. it's not waste heat, I have that system figured out.

I went through the same process while trying to get it to work the first time.  I found a bunch of guides that had plenty of info.  But, I still spent hours trying to get something to work the first time (dunno if it was because the guides were old or there was so much info in them that I couldn't get a basic idea of where to start).  I am just going to show you what I am currently using.  Maybe from that you can figure out what is going wrong on your end.

^Totally stole the design from someone else.  No idea who it was or I would credit them.  Their version used a fusion reactor (that I do not yet have access to) and ISRU to keep the reactor fueled from sea water.  I have 6 of these parked off the coast of KSC.  They are spaced out somewhat with the furthest being about 40km away from the shore.

^My orbital power station.  It is a work in progress and will likely have larger and more powerful reactors attached to it in the near future.  I am using it to experiment with other wavelengths without having to worry about atmospheric absorption.

^I have 6 IR mirrors in orbit at about 680km.  I also have 3 in geostationary orbit that have a visible light spectrum mirror attached.  I still don't understand why their status says "direct sunlight."  And for some reason I had to restart the game before they would relay power for me.  But they work and I was getting about 5GW on my Mun lander.  There is also one visible light spectrum mirror in polar orbit around the Mun.  I do not think that it helped much though because It was hardly ever aligned with my craft.

^Mun lander on the launchpad.  After much tweaking, I found the 7.5m receiver to work best with a launch nozzle that was one size smaller.  When the nozzle was the same size as the receiver I got garbage thrust.  Hydrolox carries me through most of the vertical part of the ascent while the liquid fuel handled the horizontal part and the trip to the Mun.  Haven't tried ammonia or methane yet... maybe next launch.  FYI, hotkey the receiver power toggle.  If you shut the engine down with the receiver still running and no heat sinks deployed, that 12.6GW of power will rapidly flood the ship with WasteHeat and things will explode.

^Mun lander with it's ATTILA Thruster running.  I let it run long enough for the WasteHeat to stabilize.  I get between 4GW and 5.2GW depending on where I am and what direction I am facing.  Using Lqd Krypton because it was the first fuel that succeeded in giving me enough thrust, d/v, and density for my mission.  I was able to hit 12 Biomes out of 17 on the Mun with this puppy.  I would call it OP, but it took as long to set it all up as it would have taken for me to fly several chemical rockets to the same biomes.

I hope that is enough to at least get something working that you can experiment on.  Obviously I am not one of the experienced players on this thread.  But, I know how frustrating it is to not be able to get anything to work.

[helios1138]

3 hours ago, Uberns said:

I went through the same process while trying to get it to work the first time.  I found a bunch of guides that had plenty of info.  But, I still spent hours trying to get something to work the first time (dunno if it was because the guides were old or there was so much info in them that I couldn't get a basic idea of where to start).  I am just going to show you what I am currently using.  Maybe from that you can figure out what is going wrong on your end.

^Totally stole the design from someone else.  No idea who it was or I would credit them.  Their version used a fusion reactor (that I do not yet have access to) and ISRU to keep the reactor fueled from sea water.  I have 6 of these parked off the coast of KSC.  They are spaced out somewhat with the furthest being about 40km away from the shore.

^My orbital power station.  It is a work in progress and will likely have larger and more powerful reactors attached to it in the near future.  I am using it to experiment with other wavelengths without having to worry about atmospheric absorption.

^I have 6 IR mirrors in orbit at about 680km.  I also have 3 in geostationary orbit that have a visible light spectrum mirror attached.  I still don't understand why their status says "direct sunlight."  And for some reason I had to restart the game before they would relay power for me.  But they work and I was getting about 5GW on my Mun lander.  There is also one visible light spectrum mirror in polar orbit around the Mun.  I do not think that it helped much though because It was hardly ever aligned with my craft.

^Mun lander on the launchpad.  After much tweaking, I found the 7.5m receiver to work best with a launch nozzle that was one size smaller.  When the nozzle was the same size as the receiver I got garbage thrust.  Hydrolox carries me through most of the vertical part of the ascent while the liquid fuel handled the horizontal part and the trip to the Mun.  Haven't tried ammonia or methane yet... maybe next launch.  FYI, hotkey the receiver power toggle.  If you shut the engine down with the receiver still running and no heat sinks deployed, that 12.6GW of power will rapidly flood the ship with WasteHeat and things will explode.

^Mun lander with it's ATTILA Thruster running.  I let it run long enough for the WasteHeat to stabilize.  I get between 4GW and 5.2GW depending on where I am and what direction I am facing.  Using Lqd Krypton because it was the first fuel that succeeded in giving me enough thrust, d/v, and density for my mission.  I was able to hit 12 Biomes out of 17 on the Mun with this puppy.  I would call it OP, but it took as long to set it all up as it would have taken for me to fly several chemical rockets to the same biomes.

I hope that is enough to at least get something working that you can experiment on.  Obviously I am not one of the experienced players on this thread.  But, I know how frustrating it is to not be able to get anything to work.

That helps quite a bit actually. From what I understand the

beam system underwent several changes a few months ago and the guides are outdated. They still give a general idea but they use obsolete part names and leave out key information. Took me forever to realize I need TWO dishes on my relay sats. One to receive and one to relay the beam.

[FreeThinker]

5 hours ago, Uberns said:

^Mun lander with it's ATTILA Thruster running.  I let it run long enough for the WasteHeat to stabilize.  I get between 4GW and 5.2GW depending on where I am and what direction I am facing.  Using Lqd Krypton because it was the first fuel that succeeded in giving me enough thrust, d/v, and density for my mission.  I was able to hit 12 Biomes out of 17 on the Mun with this puppy.  I would call it OP, but it took as long to set it all up as it would have taken for me to fly several chemical rockets to the same biomes.

2

This will work but will create a lot of waste heat due to conversion inefficiencies. A more efficient setup for electric propulsion would be to use rectenna receivers which are lighter, larger,  cheaper and more electric efficient at the expense of less flexibility in wavelength selection, but this can be overcome by bringing multiple rectenna each configured in a different wavelength.

5 hours ago, Uberns said:

I still don't understand why their status says "direct sunlight." 

 

This is because it uses the Stock solar array part module to control the animation. It can be ignored

Edited December 15, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Uberns]

4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

This will work but will create a lot of waste heat due to conversion inefficiencies. A more efficient setup for electric propulsion would be to use rectenna receivers which are lighter, larger,  cheaper and more electric efficient at the expense of less flexibility in wavelength selection, but this can be overcome by bringing multiple rectenna each configured in a different wavelength.

Thanks @FreeThinker!!  Ill give that a try on the next ship.

[JebsSecretary]

Does anyone else have problems with the close cycle gas core engine? Since I updated KSPIE to the latest version, it needs a reactor to run... I thought the whole point of the engine was that it is a crazy type of reactor?

Unless I have a reactor present, I can´t select a propellant in the VAB. If I then add the reactor, it works just fine...

Does this make sense? Am I doing something wrong?

 

[falcoon]

On 13.12.2017 at 2:06 PM, FreeThinker said:

yes, the Free Electron Laser (FEL) can produce positrons quite efficiently

I think it requires your attention @FreeThinker. Game speed does not influence positrons output. FEL produces always the same amount of positrons per real life second, no matter how fast game time is running. Both when vessel is active and when it is not.

Edited December 16, 2017 by falcoon

[helios1138]

What I'd like to do is turn the Mun into a giant power station that can beam power anywhere in the system. What wave length and generator would be best for that?

[ss8913]

On 12/15/2017 at 12:20 AM, FreeThinker said:

Have you tried the more advanced propellants like ammonia, methane and hydrazine?

hydrazine is amazing <3

[Nick89rs]

Ok, so I've watched 10 tutorials and read a bunch on the wiki but I can't figure this out...

 

I'm trying to test out reactors/engine combos in the VAB and I can't for the life of my find any fuel tanks/holders for the uranium floride the starter reactor uses and it has no fuel in it to start. Seriously what am I missing? Is this fuel only farmable and is there any way to test things out in sandbox without mining/refining?

[ss8913]

so... with engines like the Kerbstein, which can accelerate during timewarp to a measurable fraction of c... KSP and its various autopilots only allow for calculation of hohmann transfers.  These engines imply a "burn and turn" methodology, where you accelerate to the halfway point, flip, and brake.  How can you calculate the vectors to do this?  I can't imagine winging it or doing it on paper is particularly productive?  I'm also wondering if there's a good calculator for FTL orbital insertion, as I am still having trouble figuring out a [reliable] way to do that.

[Loren Pechtel]

34 minutes ago, ss8913 said:

so... with engines like the Kerbstein, which can accelerate during timewarp to a measurable fraction of c... KSP and its various autopilots only allow for calculation of hohmann transfers.  These engines imply a "burn and turn" methodology, where you accelerate to the halfway point, flip, and brake.  How can you calculate the vectors to do this?  I can't imagine winging it or doing it on paper is particularly productive?  I'm also wondering if there's a good calculator for FTL orbital insertion, as I am still having trouble figuring out a [reliable] way to do that.

It's not that important anyway.  I haven't played with the Kerbstein, but since you say it can push you to velocities measured in %c that's the realm of Brachistochrone trajectories.  Point at the planet and burn to turnover is going to get you pretty close.

[Raptoer]

On 12/15/2017 at 2:02 PM, JebsSecretary said:

Does anyone else have problems with the close cycle gas core engine? Since I updated KSPIE to the latest version, it needs a reactor to run... I thought the whole point of the engine was that it is a crazy type of reactor?

Unless I have a reactor present, I can´t select a propellant in the VAB. If I then add the reactor, it works just fine...

Does this make sense? Am I doing something wrong?

 

@FreeThinker 

I'm also getting this. Everything I've read has lead me to believe that I should be able to have a craft which is just the probe, fuel tank, radiator and the closed cycle gas core engine, but when I put that on the pad it complains about no reactors and produces no thrust. I also can't switch propellants on it, which may or may not be related to lack of a reactor.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Raptoer

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, Raptoer said:

@FreeThinker 

I'm also getting this. Everything I've read has lead me to believe that I should be able to have a craft which is just the probe, fuel tank, radiator and the closed cycle gas core engine, but when I put that on the pad it complains about no reactors and produces no thrust. I also can't switch propellants on it, which may or may not be related to lack of a reactor.

I should indeed add a message which mention this kind of reactor does not operate in environment with gravity/ acceleration higher than 0.5 g

[Profit-]

On 12/14/2017 at 8:25 PM, Fairin said:

2700 thrust ASL 600ish isp, on liquid fuel. something like 1k thrust and 1k isp on hydrogen but them fuel tanks are maaaaaassssive. - my career save isnt up to antimatter yet, i keep getting distracted before finishing the tech  tree by other things XD seeing the MM update maybe downgrading will put it back to work for me =)

I want to point out with pressurized air, a couple ram intakes, some tanks, a group of compressors and timberwinds I have made a vessel which carries 6K delta-V of liquid fuel, some ox/lf for RCS, a Molten salt nuclear reactor, 4 drills,some ore tanks, and a scaled up ISRU for fueling into 500K circular Orbit on nothing but air...  With about 150m/sec of compressed air Delta-V left after circularization for around 500,000 kerbal credits.  Mass is a little far on the extents, but it allows me to decouple the air gathering and use the docking ports. 

(I usually lose 2 of the 4 air brakes to heat in the launch...  It means you did good if you decide to copy this and have that issue)

Edited December 19, 2017 by Profit-

[helios1138]

15 hours ago, Nick89rs said:

Ok, so I've watched 10 tutorials and read a bunch on the wiki but I can't figure this out...

 

I'm trying to test out reactors/engine combos in the VAB and I can't for the life of my find any fuel tanks/holders for the uranium floride the starter reactor uses and it has no fuel in it to start. Seriously what am I missing? Is this fuel only farmable and is there any way to test things out in sandbox without mining/refining?

The tanks should have an option in the VAB to switch between different contents. Also the reactors should have internal storage to last for quite a while as well. I might be using a different mod.

[falcoon]

15 hours ago, ss8913 said:

engines like the Kerbstein, which can accelerate during timewarp

What are you saying? Kerbstein can accelerate during timewarp? It definitely can not in my gameplay.

I am getting usual "cannot warp faster x1 while the ship is under acceleration". Maybe there are special requirements to make it work under time warp that I am not aware of?

[Greatness101]

2 hours ago, falcoon said:

What are you saying? Kerbstein can accelerate during timewarp? It definitely can not in my gameplay.

I am getting usual "cannot warp faster x1 while the ship is under acceleration". Maybe there are special requirements to make it work under time warp that I am not aware of?

He means physics warp. Any engine can accelerate with it (this is the same type of timewarp you do while in atmosphere. Up to x4 speed).

Press Alt + (if you're using windows) to increase the speed of physics warp, alt - to decrease.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Greatness101

[falcoon]

13 minutes ago, Greatness101 said:

He means physics warp

Are you sure? I think context is different, but I might be wrong. My English is far from perfect.

I remember there used to be engines in the past that worked during non-physical time warp. I didn't look for them in my current career save, because i had no need, but maybe some of them are still capable of running this way.

[Ekaton]

I have a Nuclear Reactor (2.5 m) and a Thermic Electric Generator on top of it. I landed it on Minmus to power my colony up but it is not working at all. What am I doing wrong?

[Uberns]

2 hours ago, Ekaton said:

I have a Nuclear Reactor (2.5 m) and a Thermic Electric Generator on top of it. I landed it on Minmus to power my colony up but it is not working at all. What am I doing wrong?

Look at the pictures below and see if there is anything in them that is missing from your craft .  Ignore the laser transmitter.  I put it on the craft so that the reactor/generator would have something to power.

[Profit-]

4 hours ago, Ekaton said:

I have a Nuclear Reactor (2.5 m) and a Thermic Electric Generator on top of it. I landed it on Minmus to power my colony up but it is not working at all. What am I doing wrong?

Does it have enough radiators?

 

[Kenken244]

I, too am having a problem with the timberwind engines. as I recall it is supposed to be a powerful thermal reactor suited for launch stages, which has a built in reactor and radiators. however. in the VAB I am unable to get any information about its reactor power, and I cannot change fuel modes. once on the pad, unless I have a separate reactor on the vessel, they refuse to turn on. even with another reactor, they do not produce any thrust. I think this is a bug, unless the engine has radically changed since  the last time I used it.