KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[wkwied]

Ok... I've made progress, but with the light drive, two Tri Alpha reactors... Just to play around, I set my orbit for way high up... but when I use the drive for too longer, or I go lower than Jool's orbit, the drive shuts down and my ship is torn apart.

 

Any thoughts?

[icecreamcooper]

Please! Please! Help

BIG Question for KSPIE, I have tried to solve the problem myself but have had little success in doing much more than determining that this mod, when installed, seems to cause my solar panels to produce exactly twice as much electric charge as they are rated for and since the part in game and in there cfg files read the original ratio, as does AmpYear, yet the amount produced in game is double what it says, I could get screenshot if I am too vague. My major question comes to Solar incidence/radiance, does KSPIE make any alterations to solar incidence/radiance or does it perhaps add a multiplier to moduledeployablesolarpanles or something that is not evident, as I have searched KSPIE cfg files but found nothing that seems connected. I have also searched the forums and did not find anything, although 138 pages is a lot to try to look through, hence the post.

[pigsarehairy]

haber isru process not working even though ui shows enough space

[jhook777]

On 3/13/2019 at 3:59 PM, wkwied said:

Ok... I've made progress, but with the light drive, two Tri Alpha reactors... Just to play around, I set my orbit for way high up... but when I use the drive for too longer, or I go lower than Jool's orbit, the drive shuts down and my ship is torn apart.

 

Any thoughts?

Struts. I find that when coming out of warp, changing speed in warp or if I don't have enough power to sustain warp then my vessels will exit warp rather violently. Perhaps experiment with unbreakable joints to determine where struts are needed? Congrats on your progress, by the way! Keep an eye on the warp control window as well. When close to large gravity wells, such as Jool, moar power is needed to sustain warp. If you don't have enough then the drive shuts down and a RUD event is likely to occur.

On 3/18/2019 at 4:15 PM, pigsarehairy said:

haber isru process not working even though ui shows enough space

This one has been logged on github:

https://github.com/sswelm/KSP-Interstellar-Extended/issues/255

[Omeran]

Has there been a solution to the "DC Electrical System" problem where it consumes all the DC power for no apparent reason?

I've got a small ship off Jool with a large rechargeable battery (Z-4K), a few cryostats and 4 Gigantor XL arrays supplying a few KW, and (per the KSPI-E panel) the "DC Electrical System" consumes 5W.

If I turn one of the cryostats *off*, "DC electrical system" suddenly consumes 4KW, and it doesn't go down if I turn the cryostat back on.

 

[Drtyhppy2]

8 hours ago, Omeran said:

Has there been a solution to the "DC Electrical System" problem where it consumes all the DC power for no apparent reason?

*snip*

 

I’m not sure about an update that will fix the problem, as it doesn’t look like the issue is logged on GitHub.

However, I was the same problem at my Minmus mining base and after much trial and error (and reloading quick saves) it seems like there is something borked between the conversion of MJ and EC. Also, it seems certain interstellar parts don’t stop requesting power even after they’re turned off. 

My temporary solution has been to revert back to version 1.20.15.

Though, I’ve noticed in that version it’s possible to set up MJ/EC conversion so that a ship will never run out of power even if it’s solar panels aren’t producing any power. I can’t help but wonder if fixing the infinite production loop has created the infinite drain loop.

[jhook777]

On 3/22/2019 at 10:42 AM, Omeran said:

Has there been a solution to the "DC Electrical System" problem where it consumes all the DC power for no apparent reason?

I've got a small ship off Jool with a large rechargeable battery (Z-4K), a few cryostats and 4 Gigantor XL arrays supplying a few KW, and (per the KSPI-E panel) the "DC Electrical System" consumes 5W.

If I turn one of the cryostats *off*, "DC electrical system" suddenly consumes 4KW, and it doesn't go down if I turn the cryostat back on.

 

I have this problem from time to time as well. Especially when I start connecting bases with KAS. My solution, generally, is to overcompensate with RTGs as this seems to keep the problem from happening in the first place. Other times, I will simply cut all power from any parts that could possibly request it (either by locking the EC to reserve or by disconnecting the part using KAS). Disconnecting the offending part, or keeping these parts on separate structures that can be linked and unlinked using KAS seems to work the best. RTGs are a close second. I think you get 1.5kw for every 2 RTGs. Besides KSPIE parts requesting too much power I've also seen simple SAS take up MW of power. I generally turn off SAS, set probes to hibernate, then time accelerate (to kill wobble that could be taxing the SAS). A third culprit could be the electric generators themselves. I don't have enough observational evidence to support this, but sometimes [sometimes] I get EC back when I turn off gennies (they stop trying to use EC to fill MJ). It's a weird thing though, I don't have anything concrete on the bug, just circumstantial stuffs.

[jhook777]

I'm not the best at video. Hopefully, though, this little tutorial is useful for people looking to take that first step or two into warp travel using this mod. Free Thinker, thank you so much for maintaining this mod and making it super awesome. You rock.

 

 

[wkwied]

3 hours ago, jhook777 said:

I'm not the best at video. Hopefully, though, this little tutorial is useful for people looking to take that first step or two into warp travel using this mod. Free Thinker, thank you so much for maintaining this mod and making it super awesome. You rock.

 

 

This answers SO many questions!

 

I have one more, however. Well, two. How would I eventually need to refuel the reactor? And second, is there any major difference between the three sizes of warp drives, aside from their look?

[Maelstrom Vortex]

Were the exploding thermals in 1.5 fixed? If so I may be updating soon to bring my campaign up to speed.

[jhook777]

On 3/26/2019 at 1:01 AM, wkwied said:

This answers SO many questions!

 

I have one more, however. Well, two. How would I eventually need to refuel the reactor? And second, is there any major difference between the three sizes of warp drives, aside from their look?

The trip out to Jool to harvest Liquid Helium(3) and Liquid Deuterium would be how to refuel. The tri-alpha runs best on lqdDuet and lqdHe3 (or gaseous, it will use either). Also, the refrigerator unit will use those same materials to make fusion pellets to refuel the Z pinch engine. If you don't play with life support mods, it's lifespan is pretty much indefinite (barring SUD/RUD events, of course). Simply have the resources on board in one of the cryostats for the reactor to use them. The fusion pellets should end up in the Zpinch engine as you create them with the refrigerator unit. Fusion is great because the resources all crossfeed and can be manually transferred, as opposed to fission.

 

As for the warp drives. They scale linearly. Meaning a single 20t warp drive will do the same thing as twenty 1t warp drives. Charge one or activate one and it should just use them all.

Happy warping!

[Jumberlack]

Hi, I'm playing on the most recent release for 1.4.5 and kerbnet seems to be misbehaving and I think KSPIE may be responsible, is anyone else having weird behavior with the narrow band scanner and its resource kerbnet access?

 

Edit: I'm dumb

Edited March 29, 2019 by Jumberlack

[Raptor22]

(Note: Somehow I didn't notice that this thread existed, and posted first on the release thread. I've now moved this here.)

I've been playing around with this in an attempt to create my own warp drive parts, since the ring-type drives are hard to work with. While these Star Trek-esk nacelles probably aren't very realistic physics-wise, they make building ships much easier.
Creating the parts were quite easy - copied the module from the other warp drive configs, punched in a few of my own numbers for power, added the exotic matter resource and a radiator.
However, upon taking the ship up in to high orbit, charging the drives, setting a speed and hitting "Activate drive" - to my disappointment (but not really surprise) - only one warp trail came out. In retrospect, it makes since, as the ring-shaped drives are built to be used inline, and would only need one part to produce a trail. However, in this dual-nacelle form, that isn't quite the same.

I know it might be a small detail, but I'm a stickler for details, so it is kind of annoying. Is there anything I can do to have two + parts create the warp trail effect? If there is a simple config out there that I could edit, that might be doable - trying to edit the plugin using source code and compiling in to a DLL, however, is way beyond my skill set.

If it is the latter answer, could you consider perhaps adding a toggle button in the editor to enable this?

Another thing that I noticed is that the warp drive part that the force is applied to (at least I assume that it applies a force) is always the first drive you place down - consequently, it is the part that the warp drive control menu is on. However, this means that if you re-root the ship to try to to move something and then root it back and launch without removing the warp drives and replacing them in the correct order, this will result in a different drive (in my case, it often defaults to the aft-most warp drive part on the port nacelle, for whatever reason) becoming the core drive. This will mess up any action group for the drive that you have, in addition to risking a potential loss-of-drive event for radial drive setups like mine (detailed in the spoiler tab below to save space). 

Spoiler

This screenshot was taken around the time that I was first trying to convert the prakasa xenon tanks there in to warp drives to make my Courageous-Class Starship an actual warp-capable starship. I had dropped out of very high warp (around 100c) without decelerating. Normally, there is a drive clipped in to the center of the ship that I use as the control drive for the force application, as it's firmly held in place and to date has not separated. However, this is one of the situations that I mentioned above where re-rooting caused another drive part to become the core drive - in this case, the aft-most port nacelle. The violent force of such deceleration tore the warp nacelle off of the ship, causing vibrations that provoked the kraken to strike. 

While for the near term, figuring out how to make the effect appear out of two drives (assuming that it is within my ability to do so) would be enough to make me happy, a potential feature that you might want to toss on to the "consider for the future" pile is a similar new control in the editor which allows you to select which drive is the control drive that action groups are based on and force is applied to.

[RabidSmurf]

There seems to be a bug introduced with 1.20.17.3, the nuclear salt water engine is no longer playing nice with MechJeb. This is not an issue in 1.20.16.4

The deltav calc seems correct, but the calculated burn duration is 1000s of years when the engine is at 0 thrust. When at full thrust it will correctly calculate the burn time burn, but as soon as you kill the thrust it will be back to showing 1000s of years burn time.

This essentially makes the manuever planner freak out as it always thinks it needs to start every burn immediately, even if if the node is far in the future.

[FreeThinker]

17 hours ago, RabidSmurf said:

There seems to be a bug introduced with 1.20.17.3, the nuclear salt water engine is no longer playing nice with MechJeb. This is not an issue in 1.20.16.4

The deltav calc seems correct, but the calculated burn duration is 1000s of years when the engine is at 0 thrust. When at full thrust it will correctly calculate the burn time burn, but as soon as you kill the thrust it will be back to showing 1000s of years burn time.

This essentially makes the manuever planner freak out as it always thinks it needs to start every burn immediately, even if if the node is far in the future.

The issue should be fixed in KSPIE 1.20.18

[pp3d]

muon fusion reactor can supposedly provide power to the thermal generator

but the thermal generator can't be activated when attached to the reactor.. (no attached power power source)

 

Edited March 31, 2019 by pp3d

[pp3d]

20 minutes ago, pp3d said:

muon fusion reactor can supposedly provide power to the thermal generator

but the thermal generator can't be activated when attached to the reactor.. (no attached power power source)

 

I guess it's confusing: Thermal Generator: V -> I take this to be capable of giving thermal power to a thermal electric generator...

in this case -- it's EC generator as well

[RabidSmurf]

5 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

The issue should be fixed in KSPIE 1.20.18

Seems to be fixed for NSW engine.

I noticed the magneto plasma dynamic thruster has the same problem in the latest version (and previous versions), as well as some big differences in deltaV calcs between VAB and in-situ, which I am now thinking probably has something to do with the reactors (pebble bed) assumed state in VAB vs running in space.

Also I just want to say in general I absolutely love this mod, thank-you for your efforts!

[FreeThinker]

7 hours ago, pp3d said:

I guess it's confusing: Thermal Generator: V -> I take this to be capable of giving thermal power to a thermal electric generator...

in this case -- it's EC generator as well

Fair point, it should not  specify compatible generator or mention it has an integrated thermal power generator.

Edited March 31, 2019 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

17 hours ago, RabidSmurf said:

Seems to be fixed for NSW engine.

Good to hear. I'm curious, how are you using the NSWR in KSP? I'm always interested in how players use KSPIE parts in their campaign.

Edited March 31, 2019 by FreeThinker

[wkwied]

Got another question.

I'm following this post to use the laser nozzle:

I have a transmitter in orbit; when I activate the top receiver I get power.

Per that post, I built a rover with a transmitter sending out long Infrared.

On my craft, I have a cargo container with PCV.

When I activate the receiver on the top, or on the nozzle, I get power. But when I activate the engine, I receive the error saying fuel is missing.

Might anyone be able to tell me what I'm doing wrong?

 

[TheOrqwithVagrant]

On 3/31/2019 at 5:00 AM, FreeThinker said:

Good to hear. I'm curious, how are you using the NSWR in KSP? I'm always interested in how players use KSPIE parts in their campaign.

I think I'll make a write-up of my very long running 6.4x scale + OPM campaign some day, it might interest both you and others in this thread. My "SSMC" "Self-Sufficient Mining Colonizer"-class ship tends to shake out any and every bug from both KSPIe and MKS/USI - the 'lander/miner' section contains essentially full production lines for KSPIe ISRU + MKS/USI local construction. Right now, pretty much everything is working (thanks for fixing the Haber process!). There used to be nasty bug where various reactor values would end up NaN and basically nothing could bring them back online, but I haven't seen that since the last update. I battle some kind of ship-shaking Kraken a lot, but I'm sure that's a 6.4x scaling issue. There is also a heat-transfer weirdness issue where *one* compressed gas (out of four symmetrically placed ones) tank on the SSMC-class ships will overheat and explode during initial takeoff from Kerbin.

Here's the SSMC "I Eat Moons And Poop Colonies" next to Ridgeview City, constructed entirely from in-situ mined resources. Ship weighs almost 4000 tons wet & 1500 tons dry - landing her is 'interesting' to say the least, but I've done it on *Kerbin* once when I had to bring the first version back for "refurb" because some things massively needed to be re-balanced (nowadays I thoroughly test new designs in Sandbox before launching them in the actual campaign...):

 

 

EDIT: Some more info about the ship above. 

2 Sections - the lander/miner and a detatchible orbital 'habitat' which has some propulsive capabilities of its own, but relies on beamed power from the lander section (which has enormous amounts of power) to light up its plasma nozzles. The orbital section also directly enables planetary logistics when arriving at a 'new' world. Here, since Mun already has a station, the SSMC landed with the orbital section still attached.

The 'main' section - the lander/miner/factory and propulsive unit has 3 different forms of propulsion (Thermal Nozzle + Positron Reactor for high-twr burns), 4 3.75m plasma nozzles connected to Antimatter-initiated fusion reactors (the 'main' propulsion), and two 2.5m Plasma Wakefield engines ( these are astonishingly versatile - if all reactors are turned to power generation and caesium or buckyballs are provided, the wakefield engines can actually be used for takeoff and landing from most airless worlds! However - the ship does not really have enough radiators to run the wakefields at 'full power' for more than a few minutes. Oh, and there's also a 'backup' 1.25m antimatter beam-core reactor for 'emergencies' XD

...we really need a better resource display - even the Alternative Resource Panel can't adequately display the absolute TON of different raw materials and resulting product resources that a 'full and complete' ISRU & MKS/USI production line requires.

Edited April 1, 2019 by TheOrqwithVagrant

[jhook777]

I also want to say thank you for fixing the Haber process (and in general the updates to the ISRU parts, moar info is always a good thing!). I made a video showing it's basic functionality. I'll edit this with the link when Youtube is done processing it!

 

Sorry, the sound kind of messes up part way through, but it clears up after a couple minutes.

Edited April 1, 2019 by jhook777
added link to video

[Snoman314]

I've spent an hour so searching through the forums and wiki and can't find anywhere any explanation of the different reactor fuels for the Candle engine. What's the difference between using Plutonium-238 and EnrichedUranium reactor fuels? It doesn't seem to affect the thrust or ISP at all, from what I can tell in the editor.

 

[FreeThinker]

8 hours ago, Snoman314 said:

I've spent an hour so searching through the forums and wiki and can't find anywhere any explanation of the different reactor fuels for the Candle engine. What's the difference between using Plutonium-238 and EnrichedUranium reactor fuels? It doesn't seem to affect the thrust or ISP at all, from what I can tell in the editor.

 

2

You are correct that they are currently identical except in cost and mass.  The reason is simply they aren't finished yet. The  Plutonium-238 is supposedly the premium type of fuel with better performance compared to the (20% enriched) Uranium. However, plutonium fuel was never intended as the main fuel for the Candle engine which is based on the Traveling Wave Reactor design which is supposed to breed its own fuel and only use plutonium as a flame that would start the candle. The fuel could be any fertile material which includes unprocessed uranium,  depleted uranium or thorium

Edited April 2, 2019 by FreeThinker