KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[Mandella]

It would appear that different instances of the  Ablative Laser Nozzle always draw from a communal "tank" of PVC fuel on the vessel, even if separated by decouplers or other parts that do not have crossfeed enabled. This makes it difficult, if not impossible to use them in a staged manner.

Is this a bug, expected behavior, or am I doing something wrong?

[jhook777]

On 2/8/2020 at 10:09 PM, Mandella said:

Coming back to KSP and Intersteller after a bit of a break, and nice to see so many upgrades. But I might be going to need to have some help on something.

I wanted to try an alternate tech progression where beamed power was introduced earlier in the tech tree, so I moved the Ablative Laser Nozzle and the Diode Laser Array down a few nodes. They are showing up fine, but I can't seem to get things to work properly. I'm getting all the menus and readouts from the parts, but even boosting a rocket with the nozzle up high in the air I'm not getting any fire at all.

To be clear, this is not a bug report -- I just need a little tutorial. I'm sure I'm doing something obviously wrong.

Oh, and I am going through all of Jhook777's great videos, but I don't think he uses the Ablative Laser Nozzle in any I have seen.

Thank you for pointing that out. I had forgotten to include the ablative nozzle. I'll make sure it gets a tutorial asap! Been a while since I messed with that part.

 

[jhook777]

In the mean time, to get you started, the ablative nozzle is like a receiver in that it has a power receiver interface and needs to be activated in addition to activating the engine. low thrust in atmo. better in vacuum. use a gigajoule(s) laser to boost in atmo.

[Mandella]

53 minutes ago, jhook777 said:

Thank you for pointing that out. I had forgotten to include the ablative nozzle. I'll make sure it gets a tutorial asap! Been a while since I messed with that part.

 

Thanks! Your videos were still a big help, even if you didn't use the ablative nozzles particularly. I've been able to get an ablative stack working and a bunch of infrared lasers set up to boost it (hint, the trick was moar power -- a lot more power than I was first starting with). Once I figured out which windows to have open and which outputs to watch it wasn't that hard, although the visual glitch that the ablative nozzle looks like it is putting out fire when there is actually no thrust was confusing.

The problem I am having now is what I mentioned in my next post. Apparently all the ablative nozzles feed from a central source on a craft, making it really hard to build something that stages. If you could check this and confirm I would appreciate this. I know this is not your mod, but you've got a lot more experience troubleshooting this stuff and I might have missed something.

[jhook777]

First ten minutes is on the ablative nozzle (better late than never??). 

 

When you say 

On 2/16/2020 at 6:21 PM, Mandella said:

Apparently all the ablative nozzles feed from a central source on a craft,

what exactly do you mean? Do you mean they draw fuel (pvc) from a central source or is something messing with the laser? (a single laser powering multiple engines may be a bit tricky as it will have to divide between them all. still should be doable with ... you guessed it, moar powa!)

 

[Mandella]

16 hours ago, jhook777 said:

First ten minutes is on the ablative nozzle (better late than never??). 

 

When you say 

what exactly do you mean? Do you mean they draw fuel (pvc) from a central source or is something messing with the laser? (a single laser powering multiple engines may be a bit tricky as it will have to divide between them all. still should be doable with ... you guessed it, moar powa!)

 

 

Let's say you build a more "traditional" craft using the Ablative Laser Nozzle (after all, the rocket equation still applies, especially at lower tech levels). You have a lower stage powered by the ALN, a middle stage also with an ALN, and finally the payload. As it stands now on my install, once the lower stage has completed its burn and separated, the ALN attached to the second stage is also out of propellant. In fact it does not matter how many ALNs you put on a craft, the propellant load apparently stays the same.

Interestingly enough, this even applies when the payload is fully encased in one of Ground Construction's fairings, which actually spawns the payload during fairing ejection. If the payload is powered by an ALN that ALN is also empty of propellant.

I've been able to build some orbital rockets using cheating methods. I Hyperedit fuel back into the stages as soon as they separate, so that sorta works, although I'm pretty sure it gives me a very "unrealistic" dry/wet mass ratio.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Mandella

[jhook777]

On 2/26/2020 at 12:17 PM, Mandella said:

As it stands now on my install, once the lower stage has completed its burn and separated, the ALN attached to the second stage is also out of propellant. In fact it does not matter how many ALNs you put on a craft, the propellant load apparently stays the same.

Ok I understand you now. I'll poke at this and see what I come up with. Seems like a fuel feed thing that could probably be sorted easily once identified.

 

[tomf]

I've found an interesting feature. The config and the description text for the toroidal antiproton tank say that it should hold 10,000 antimatter and it is priced with a base cost of 10,000 + 100*10,000.

However when I add it to a craft it has an antmatter capacity of only 250 and costs 985,000when empty. This is in a test install with only warp plugin and community resource pack installed. I also tried deleting the dlls in the plugin directory and then the tank behaved as normal, so I think it is something in the plugin code that is messing with the capacity.

All the other antimatter tanks are behaving as expected.

Edited February 29, 2020 by tomf

[Olorin]

Hey FreeThinker, I'm having a lot of fun with this and loving unlocking the science tree.

I'm currently playing on version 1.9.1 and found a funny bug.

When using the nuclear NERVA again, the delta-v stats can't seem to be estimated anywhere near accurately. The fuel loaded is liquid fuel.

 

By fiddling with the fuel type, delta-v estimates are produced, but none of them are accurate. 

 

Upon launching the rocket, a delta-v figure is given, though it completely differs between the stage readout and other estimates.

 

 

By placing the rocket into orbit, only then does a proper delta-v show, but there is still a discrepancy between stage figure and other measures. (Shown using liquid fuel).

 

Log file attached below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19d1TZjlekdljoz_hoxp_EQ0_qpq4FG9E/view?usp=sharing

[samooo2]

I'm getting some weird behavior with beamed power. I'm sitting right next to the transmitter, spotsize is tiny, facing is almost 100% and my thermal receiver is only getting about 0.5% of transmitted power. When I stick a microwave transducer on the same ship that one can receive the proper amount. Am I missing something obvious?

Didn't have this problem with earlier versions, and I checked the videos above they don't show it either. My fisrt thought was a mod conflict, but the whole beamed power thing is exclusive to KSPI-E so I don't see how...

EDIT: Seems to go away once I decouple two stages, ragardless of where they are mounted or what's in them. So I just carry two empty decouplers for every rocket launch, as a workaround.

Edited March 7, 2020 by samooo2

[FreeThinker]

@samooo2 Beamed power availability is distributed on a first come first serve scheme meaning if there is another part on a vessel in reciever mode, parts the are further away from the probe core will receive much less or nothing. In this case you should dissable Inline transducer to allow the inline reciever to reciever the beamd power

Edited March 9, 2020 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

On 3/2/2020 at 10:06 AM, Olorin said:

Hey FreeThinker, I'm having a lot of fun with this and loving unlocking the science tree.

I'm currently playing on version 1.9.1 and found a funny bug.

When using the nuclear NERVA again, the delta-v stats can't seem to be estimated anywhere near accurately. The fuel loaded is liquid fuel.

 

By fiddling with the fuel type, delta-v estimates are produced, but none of them are accurate. 

 

Upon launching the rocket, a delta-v figure is given, though it completely differs between the stage readout and other estimates.

 

 

By placing the rocket into orbit, only then does a proper delta-v show, but there is still a discrepancy between stage figure and other measures. (Shown using liquid fuel).

 

Log file attached below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19d1TZjlekdljoz_hoxp_EQ0_qpq4FG9E/view?usp=sharing

Notice that the calculation of deltaV will differ when in an atmsophere or not as it affects the effective isp.

[samooo2]

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

@samooo2 Beamed power availability is distributed on a first come first serve scheme meaning if there is another part on a vessel in reciever mode, parts the are further away from the probe core will receive much less or nothing. In this case you should dissable Inline transducer to allow the inline reciever to reciever the beamd power

Thanks for responding. But I only added the transducer later, for comparison. Sorry, I should've been more clear. I can reproduce the problem even with just the thermal receiver, no other receivers on the ship or on others. Here is a minimal example: just a probe core, thermal receiver, thermal engine and two decouplers.

You can see the ship is getting less than 0.5% power initially, and then jumps to full once I throw the decouplers away.

Logfile: https://pastebin.com/wh0ZPMN8

It's not really a problem now that I have a workaround, it's just a ...weird mystery.

[ss8913]

finally got KSP working again on 1.9.1 with all my mods... I notice that the positron containers are smaller, but there's a positron *generator* now... what is not clear from the part info is how to make it generate positrons.. how is that accomplished?

[Olorin]

11 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Notice that the calculation of deltaV will differ when in an atmsophere or not as it affects the effective isp.

Yeah, though there's no reliable information to go on before launch. Which means I'd have to calculate delta v by hand. If it was just the other readout mods I could say it was them that needed updating. But the vanilla delta v readout per stage is also affected.

[samooo2]

16 hours ago, Olorin said:

Yeah, though there's no reliable information to go on before launch. Which means I'd have to calculate delta v by hand. If it was just the other readout mods I could say it was them that needed updating. But the vanilla delta v readout per stage is also affected.

Even if you do calculate by hand it won't necessarily be accurate, since some thermal engines change ISP based on throttle or wasteheat level.

[Rukik]

Hi everyone, 

I'm new to the fourms, I installed kspie and this is awesome, quite the learning curve. I've watched the tutorials and have designed my first ssto planes with great success, did a duna and Ike trip and made enough science to unlock antimatter. So I built my second ssto plane and used a beam core antimatter reactor to supply power with the generator that does thermal and charged particles. I fitted the ship with everything I need for antimatter, and my tanks are full. Have collectors, storage and antihydrogen production. Also a positron factory. My problem now is when I am orbiting kerbin doing final systems check before a grand voyage, my beam core reactor stops working. The reactor panel says it is solid hydrogen deprived. So I went back to the vab and looked for a solid hydrogen tank, but found nothing... what am i doing wrong here?

[samooo2]

4 hours ago, Rukik said:

Hi everyone, 

I'm new to the fourms, I installed kspie and this is awesome, quite the learning curve. I've watched the tutorials and have designed my first ssto planes with great success, did a duna and Ike trip and made enough science to unlock antimatter. So I built my second ssto plane and used a beam core antimatter reactor to supply power with the generator that does thermal and charged particles. I fitted the ship with everything I need for antimatter, and my tanks are full. Have collectors, storage and antihydrogen production. Also a positron factory. My problem now is when I am orbiting kerbin doing final systems check before a grand voyage, my beam core reactor stops working. The reactor panel says it is solid hydrogen deprived. So I went back to the vab and looked for a solid hydrogen tank, but found nothing... what am i doing wrong here?

I'm not far enough in yet to use that generator, but if you just need solid hydrogen you can get that in any of the cryogenic storage tanks. By default they store something else but just rightclick them in VAB and it gives you like 20 options.

[Rukik]

Oh ok, I didn't see the option for solid hydrogen, I will check tonight when I'm home from work, thanks.

So I found to solid hydrogen tanks, thanks a bunch. I have 1 more question. The antihydrogen tank, the one that creates or destroys it. Is there anyway to stop it from exploding during time warp? 100x it's fine, 1000x it blows up. The temp is stable at 100x when I click 1000 the temp skyrockets in half a second and boom. I have lots of ec and mj available.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Rukik
Another question

[confuciuszombie]

I'm having an issue where the plasma nozzle is unable to have attachments on more than one end of it - making attaching a decoupler to it impossible.

Basically if I have a plasma nozzle at the bottom of my stack, I cannot attach a decoupler. I thought to workaround this by taking the nozzle off, attaching a decoupler to the bottom of my stack, attaching the plasma nozzle (flipped 180 degrees) to it, then taking the decoupler + nozzle off, flipping it again and reattaching to the bottom of the stack. While I could attach the decoupler to the nozzle this way, I couldn't then attach the nozzle + decoupler back to the bottom of the stack!

Here's an image to demonstrate the lack of attachment, notice the TD-25 decoupler at the bottom of the nozzle that isn't attaching:

And the attempted solution (nozzle + decoupler after doing some flippy-dos)

 

Pretty annoying issue.

 

I'm noticing that the nozzle still has the green/black spheres that I assume represent attachment points on either end of it, indicating that attaching things should be possible. But it's just not working.

 

Edited March 20, 2020 by confuciuszombie

[ss8913]

@FreeThinker I have some... questions, regarding the IXS cockpit:

1. Is it possible to fix the lights?  there's a button to toggle lights, but there are no lights

2. I notice this seems to be pulled from the general IXS warpship mod - at least the files in that mod seem to line up with these.  I notice further that you've only pulled in the cockpit; If I install that other IXS mod, will it conflict or coexist with KSPIE?  Or should I just pull the part folders from that other mod and drop it into KSPIE's parts folder, to get them without installing conflicting DLLs?

[FreeThinker]

1 I dont know how to fix it

2 It should not conflict

[ss8913]

12 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

1 I dont know how to fix it

2 It should not conflict

i took a look at the configs, it seems like it might be a problem with loading the emissive textures... but I'm not sure, last time I dealt with this was XP10 doing paint jobs for a virtual airline and this seems... similar but different, and i can't figure out where it's being told which files to even use for which textures

 

update: CKAN definitely thinks the 2 mods conflict.  I'm attempting to just copy the part folders in and see what happens.
update: it actively conflicts.  warnings and at least one fatal error from, surprisingly, B9PartSwitch, which the IXS module seems to rely on for many of its part configs.

Edited March 28, 2020 by ss8913

[Omeran]

I noticed something weird about the interstellar science lab - If I only have once scientist on board, I can't get any new data from experiments into the lab, but I if I do have data, I can do research.

Is this intentional?

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, Omeran said:

I noticed something weird about the interstellar science lab - If I only have once scientist on board, I can't get any new data from experiments into the lab, but I if I do have data, I can do research.

Is this intentional?

Yes, you need 2 scientist