KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[Thorbane]

I'm having a nasty problem with my electrical systems.  The priority system isn't working(or is backwards), so anytime something draws more power than the reactor can provide, I run out of EC and lose control.

Also convection based cooling doesn't seem to be functioning.

[singlet]

On 9/6/2018 at 9:23 AM, whitespacekilla said:

@singlet have you tried Part Commander?

I can see making that menu work on smaller screens being out of the realm of possibility.

@whitespacekilla, Thank you for your suggestion. I tried installing it, and it works. Unfortunately the mod seems to be somewhat unfinished (blank icons, hard to resize, etc.), and it feels a bit needlessly complicated to use it to see just one context menu for me. Maybe later?

21 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

I'm afraid the Jittering is a stock issue. But to be frank, the stock context menu gives me continual headaches. One thing I could do it replace buttons for switch UI. For instance, for thermal engines the next, previous and current propellant could be converted into a single propellant switch. Another option is to give partmodules its own context menu. For instance, the electric generator would greatly benefit from its own context menu. This would replace multiple fields with a single button and offer much more detailed information to be displayed.

@FreeThinker, I agree that the jittering is a stock issue, and it would be best if they fix the problem in the stock KSP side.

But it is still true that many of the displayed fields are not needed during normal flight, and the information clutters the menu window. In my opinion it would be better to be able to hide / show those fields, just like the stock RCS controls do. RCS thrusters can be set to augment the main thruster, but the control field is usually hidden in the context menu because that is not something usually needed in-flight. In the rare case you need additional thrust from RCS thrusters, you can still expand the RCS control and set them as you want. I think this is the cleanest approach, maybe even the easiest one.

Reducing the number of control buttons removes just a couple of lines from the menu, so I don't think that would make a lot of difference for my problem of oversized windows. But I still think it is a good thing to simplify GUI elements if you can retain the same functionality and not increase the complexity of normal operations. As for me, I almost never use the previous propellant button, and a single propellant switch button will suffice. Maybe something similar to the slide control used in InterstellarFuelSwitch? That will combine the functionality of next / previous propellant buttons and current propellant info field into one control, and make normal operations easier than before.

Giving a generator its own info menu may be a good idea in my opinion. Dedicated information can be shown in the separate window, and frequently needed information like current power may be shown both in the window and in the context menu I guess.

[Gildarrious]

Hey @FreeThinker, first off, I want to thank you for this awesome mod. I've put in like 50 hours in just interstellar hard mode career. Trying to get funds with the cost of these parts is nightmarish! I have a small concern that I cannot seem to figure out using all of the wikis/questions available. 

It would seem that the component Open Gas Core Reactor is not working properly. I have seen that it has buoyancy as a component in the CFG and older wikis which is related to gravity. Using Hyperedit I have placed this in various gravitational situations, and it never achieves more than 50% power. At first on the ground it has .005% power generation, then adding more MJ of power allows it to reach 50% once placed in orbit. It never goes higher than this in spite of placement in high/low orbits and around other SOIs. Is this intended to never broach 50%, or is this working as intended? I can supply images if requested, but it is really just the power output that is suffering.

I have disabled NF interaction and have drastically oversupplied energy storage and power transmission capabilities to test as well.

Image here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wonbw5q3ucebls5/Screenshot 2018-09-07 02.29.13.png?dl=0

Description to follow: 

Open Cycle Gas Core reactor excel a generating high amount of thermal power at double the core temperatures the Closed Cycle predecessor with less mass. This is achieved my removing the walls that separate the propellant and the nuclear fuel. Although this allows much higher core temperatures, the disadvantage is the reactor cannot operate while under the influence of acceleration, which happens when it is either on he surface or when accelerating at high speed.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Gildarrious
Added Image

[FreeThinker]

@Gildarrious As said, the Open Cycle Gas Core reactor does not like acceleration, but it does have a 0.5G tolerance, which means that as long as you stay below this threshold, you should be able the generate full power for propulsion when connected to a (plasma  nozzle) or power generation (when connected to an MHD electric generator). When you connect with a less compatible module like a regular thermal nozzle or thermal power generator, which cannot deal with temperatures above 3000 K, power will also be severely reduced or not function at all. The details can be found in the Module Info in the VAB. The most suitable application for this reactor type is performing Hohmann manoeuvres with heavy interplanetary crewed vessels., not for any ascending vessel.

Edited September 7, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Gildarrious]

Thank you @FreeThinker for your quick response, unfortunately this does not seem to be the case. Please see here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlitetbz3jmk8be/Screenshot 2018-09-07 03.27.11.png?dl=0 with the exact same vessel using two MHD generators instead of one MHD and one thermal. As you can see, the reactor is still pegged at 50% output in the reactor control window. Waste heat is under control, energy is sufficient, there is no G force or even an engine to push it. Could this be a bug? One MHD alone is also not changing it, but I didn't grab an image of that.

[Omeran]

I'm trying to use the "large universal mining auger" to mine Gilly. The ore and regolith come out just fine, but for some reason the ore doesn't count for "Acquire X units of fresh ore from Gilly".

Any idea why is that, or how can it be fixed?

[FreeThinker]

27 minutes ago, Omeran said:

I'm trying to use the "large universal mining auger" to mine Gilly. The ore and regolith come out just fine, but for some reason the ore doesn't count for "Acquire X units of fresh ore from Gilly".

Any idea why is that, or how can it be fixed?

I guess you are referring to a contract here. I'm afraid this contract is not compatible with KSPIE universal drilling system. I guess the contractor did not mention you had to use a stock ore resource collector

[Omeran]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

I guess you are referring to a contract here. I'm afraid this contract is not compatible with KSPIE universal drilling system. I guess the contractor did not mention you had to use a stock ore resource collector

Yup. Bummer. Is there a way to fix this?

I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like the K&K inline drill does count for this kind of contracts.

[FreeThinker]

18 minutes ago, Omeran said:

I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like the K&K inline drill does count for this kind of contracts.

 

I'm not sure but I believe K&K still used the stock resource harvester module. Kspie use an entirely proprietary resource harvester.

18 minutes ago, Omeran said:

Yup. Bummer. Is there a way to fix this?

 

Yes but you have to hack a little: Simply copy the resource harvester module definition from the ore harvester part and copy it into the Universal collector part. This should allow you to fulfil the resource collection contract.

Edited September 7, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Omeran]

29 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

I'm not sure but I believe K&K still used the stock resource harvester module. Kspie use an entirely proprietary resource harvester.

Yes but you have to cheat a little: simply copy the resource harvester module definition from the ore part and copy it into the Universal collector part.

I see no reason it shouldn't work, so I consider this a little bit of hacking, not cheating

Edited September 7, 2018 by Omeran

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, Gildarrious said:

Thank you @FreeThinker for your quick response, unfortunately this does not seem to be the case. Please see here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlitetbz3jmk8be/Screenshot 2018-09-07 03.27.11.png?dl=0 with the exact same vessel using two MHD generators instead of one MHD and one thermal. As you can see, the reactor is still pegged at 50% output in the reactor control window.

1

2 MHD generators? Technically, a reactor can only be connected to a single power generator. You receive a 50% power reduction you get when not connected to a (single) MHD generator/plasma nozzle.  Have you tried connecting it to a single MHD generator/plasma Nozzle?

15 hours ago, Thorbane said:

I'm having a nasty problem with my electrical systems.  The priority system isn't working(or is backwards), so anytime something draws more power than the reactor can provide, I run out of EC and lose control.

 

Could you describe a vessel configuration or provide a screendump for me to replicate the problem?

5 hours ago, Gildarrious said:

@FreeThinker Trying to get funds with the cost of these parts is nightmarish!

 

Do you think the cost is too high of certain parts? The reactors are supposed to be expansive and should only be their worth their cost for the most ambitious missions. If you want to reduce cost, you should consider beamed power, where you can send the power from a single reactor to multiple vessels.

Edited September 7, 2018 by FreeThinker

[secretly_asian]

On 9/6/2018 at 2:38 PM, FreeThinker said:

Considering the positron antimatter reactor functions by injecting positron into the propellant to generate power, I think we minimise spool up time.

Have you tried increasing the reactorSpeedMult property in the Reactors partmodule? It currently set to 2, increase it to 20 and see if it solves the issue.

I don't think you quite understand the issue i am currently having. I have a spaceplane with 2 positron reactors, with a thermal nozzle and thermal generator on both. When I throttle up, one reactor powers up faster than the other, causing a difference in thrust between the two engines, cause the aircraft to spin out of control. No matter how slowly i throttle up, and no matter how high i set the reactorspeedmult, at any given time one engine is putting out 50-500kn more thrust than the other until they both reach maximum thrust, at which from then on there isnt a difference in thrust. If i reduce throttle and increase it again, the same problem happens, regardless of propellant used. 

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, secretly_asian said:

I don't think you quite understand the issue i am currently having. I have a spaceplane with 2 positron reactors, with a thermal nozzle and thermal generator on both. When I throttle up, one reactor powers up faster than the other, causing a difference in thrust between the two engines, cause the aircraft to spin out of control. No matter how slowly i throttle up, and no matter how high i set the reactorspeedmult, at any given time one engine is putting out 50-500kn more thrust than the other until they both reach maximum thrust, at which from then on there isnt a difference in thrust. If i reduce throttle and increase it again, the same problem happens, regardless of propellant used. 

Could you provide a ship file so I can reproduce or privide a screendump with a detailed description of the vessel.

[Gildarrious]

7 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

11 hours ago, Gildarrious said:

Thank you @FreeThinker for your quick response, unfortunately this does not seem to be the case. Please see here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlitetbz3jmk8be/Screenshot 2018-09-07 03.27.11.png?dl=0 with the exact same vessel using two MHD generators instead of one MHD and one thermal. As you can see, the reactor is still pegged at 50% output in the reactor control window.

1

2 MHD generators? Technically, a reactor can only be connected to a single power generator. You receive a 50% power reduction you get when not connected to a (single) MHD generator/plasma nozzle.  Have you tried connecting it to a single MHD generator/plasma Nozzle?

Hey again, @FreeThinker. I have put together two ships per your instructions. Still pegged at 50% for the single (1) MHD and reactor combo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dgd53dj2vyr65i/Screenshot 2018-09-07 14.13.23.png?dl=0. For the single MHD plazma nozzle, I tried a few configurations but was unable to get the reactor working with it. Reactor displayed 0% active with all the plasma thrusters I tried. Example here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b077vny23frin64/Screenshot 2018-09-07 14.36.26.png?dl=0. Engine fired and was usable, but did not appear to draw energy from the reactor. Neither did the magneto plasma truster, although that drew no power and had no thrust? I presume this is just my ignorance and I'm not too concerned, but I still want to get OCGC reactor working above 50% to upgrade my beamed power network.

 

Regarding cost, it is much harder to gather funds than stock, with many times the tourist mission between real missions, but that is the price of fancy tech I suppose so I'm ok with it. 

[singlet]

8 hours ago, Gildarrious said:

Hey again, @FreeThinker. I have put together two ships per your instructions. Still pegged at 50% for the single (1) MHD and reactor combo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dgd53dj2vyr65i/Screenshot 2018-09-07 14.13.23.png?dl=0. For the single MHD plazma nozzle, I tried a few configurations but was unable to get the reactor working with it. Reactor displayed 0% active with all the plasma thrusters I tried. Example here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b077vny23frin64/Screenshot 2018-09-07 14.36.26.png?dl=0. Engine fired and was usable, but did not appear to draw energy from the reactor. Neither did the magneto plasma truster, although that drew no power and had no thrust? I presume this is just my ignorance and I'm not too concerned, but I still want to get OCGC reactor working above 50% to upgrade my beamed power network.

@Gildarrious, I'm afraid you are using the wrong engine. That engine in the second screenshot is something from another mod, possibly NearFuturePropulsion. You need the "Plasma Nozzle" from KSPIE. The combination of plasma nozzle + OCGC reactor + thermal generator works fairly well with 100% power in my game.

By the way, @FreeThinker, the "Max Calculated Thrust" value for the above combination shows 350kN thrust when inactive, but can actually provide only about 150kN when 100% powered. This behaviour causes some trouble in determining the time for engine firing. Would it be possible to change the calculation so that the field will show the actual max thrust (150kN in this case)?

[secretly_asian]

12 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Could you provide a ship file so I can reproduce or privide a screendump with a detailed description of the vessel.

https://imgur.com/a/BJFBDer

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t2vseztilfep34f/Antimatter Retriever.craft?dl=0

Mods Concerning this craft:

KSPIE (doh lol)

Procedural Parts

Kerbal Foundries 2

Ven's Stock Revamp

B9 Procedural Wings

Modular Fuel Tanks

Mainsailor's textures for procedural parts

Tweakscale (for the reactors, engines, generators, and radiators)

 

***PS***

The thermal turbojet nozzle seems to have a second exhaust animation behind it when the realplume config is removed.

Edited September 8, 2018 by secretly_asian

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, secretly_asian said:

https://imgur.com/a/BJFBDer

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t2vseztilfep34f/Antimatter Retriever.craft?dl=0

Mods Concerning this craft:

KSPIE (doh lol)

Procedural Parts

Kerbal Foundries 2

Ven's Stock Revamp

B9 Procedural Wings

Modular Fuel Tanks

Mainsailor's textures for procedural parts

Tweakscale (for the reactors, engines, generators, and radiators)

 

***PS***

The thermal turbojet nozzle seems to have a second exhaust animation behind it when the realplume config is removed.

When trying to make an reproducable craft, its best to simply take a stock vessel and simply add the kspie part that have undesirebly behavious, tht way we exclude any weird interaction and make the vessel much easier to exhange.

From what I can tell from the screen dumbs it a basic bulit shaped airplane with 2 positron antimatter engine attached on the wings, correct?

[secretly_asian]

38 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

When trying to make an reproducable craft, its best to simply take a stock vessel and simply add the kspie part that have undesirebly behavious, tht way we exclude any weird interaction and make the vessel much easier to exhange.

From what I can tell from the screen dumbs it a basic bulit shaped airplane with 2 positron antimatter engine attached on the wings, correct?

Yes that is correct, here is a test craft using only stock and KSPIE parts. I still have the same problem, and the engines are set up the exact same way they are in the aircraft.

https://imgur.com/a/b7DenKA

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcgkhc1lyj4pmj6/Positron Engine Test.craft?dl=0

 

***please note***

The slow motion mod i have installed is only so i can capture individual physics frames, when running at normal speed, the craft jerks to one side.

Edited September 8, 2018 by secretly_asian

[FreeThinker]

12 hours ago, Gildarrious said:

Hey again, @FreeThinker. I have put together two ships per your instructions. Still pegged at 50% for the single (1) MHD and reactor combo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dgd53dj2vyr65i/Screenshot 2018-09-07 14.13.23.png?dl=0.

Alright, I can confirm there is defiantly a problem with the Open Cycle Gas Core reactor. It appears it is not using the plasmaEnergyEficiency but instead using the thermalEnergyEfficiency. So a Quick fix to get 100% power output is to change thermalEnergyEfficiency from 0.5 to 1 in GasCoreFissionReactor.cfg.  I will make a proper fix in next release.

Edited September 8, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Gildarrious]

41 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Alright, I can confirm there is defiantly a problem with the Open Cycle Gas Core reactor. It appears it is not using the plasmaEnergyEficiency but instead using the thermalEnergyEfficiency. So a Quick fix to get 100% power output is to change thermalEnergyEfficiency from 0.5 to 1 in GasCoreFissionReactor.cfg.  I will make a proper fix in next release.

Thanks so much! You're a rockstar @FreeThinker!

[FreeThinker]

@Gildarrious

This is how an good Open Cycle Gas Core Power ship should look like

Notice the Gas Core reactor is connected directly to a Plasma Nozzle to provide thrust and a single MHD generator at the front to generate high efficient power to feed a beamed power network or for electric propulsion.

[NastyEbilPiwate]

For some reason when I try and use this ship (it's a test design to demonstrate this issue), the thermal turbojet never produces any thrust. The reactor stays on 0% power and never builds thermalpower or heat. This is done in sandbox mode but the same thing happens in my career mode game.

 

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, NastyEbilPiwate said:

For some reason when I try and use this ship (it's a test design to demonstrate this issue), the thermal turbojet never produces any thrust. The reactor stays on 0% power and never builds thermalpower or heat. This is done in sandbox mode but the same thing happens in my career mode game.

 

A standard Beam core antimatter reactor has a power output is 18 Terra Watt and mend for interstellar propulsion. Besides being too powerful for Thermal Propulsion, Hard-X rays are very hard generate localized thermal propulsion. Instead it would cause instant evaporation of the nozzle, especially in an atmosphere where it would heat up the surrounding atmosphere with hard x-ray. Instead you should use the Positron Antimatter reactor which has about the same behavior and performance as the classic KSPI antimatter reactor.

Edited September 8, 2018 by FreeThinker

[NastyEbilPiwate]

I've tried that one too, and some of the fusion reactors and they all do the same thing. Interestingly with one plane design I got it to work (as you say, running it on minimal power in-atmo is the only way to not explode) but then on the next flight attempt it stopped working again.

[FreeThinker]

You can now Version 1.19.9 for Kerbal Space Program 1.4.5 from here

Released on 2018-09-08

• Compiled against KSP 1.4.5
• Added reactor activity animation to Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor
• Added increased tweakscale sizes for RCS and electric engine
• Balance: Reduced utilization thermal power/propulsion utilization for Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor
• Fixed full utilization for MHD power generator combined with Open Cycle Gas Core or Plasma Jet Magneto Inertial Fusion Reactor
• Fixed Thermal/Plasma/Magnetic nozzle imbalance with multiple reactors
• Fixed ghost persistent thrust when below 0.1 kn thrust

Edited September 9, 2018 by FreeThinker