KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[Sokar408]

Just a quick question. Has Mechjeb and Interstellar engines become better friends over the years?

(as in, can mechjeb actually be used now? Back in Wave-Functions version, Mechjeb would be unable to perform most maneuvers because of an inability to to correctly calculate burn times and thrusts)

[danielboro]

@Sokar408

as of last reals on 1.2.2 no
i manually move the node 1-3 sec to help MJ do a better burn

[Axeon]

Hi! I've encountered a pretty weird bug, that pretty much breaks by antimatter-powered spaceplane design. The small antimatter bottle doesn't seem to load properly in the world - it just detaches and floats there, and upon quicksaving/quickloading it just straight up disappears like it wasn't even there. I have plenty of mods, but I've reproduced it on a clean KSPI install to be sure, screenshots with descriptions attached. It was also present on the 1.2 build, so I decided to leap to 1.3 in hopes that it would not be bugged there - but no luck. 

P.S. "Vista" is now 10m only? Really? I've been using in on my spaceplane in its 3.75m variant, but 10... I can't even think of a scenario it would be useful in now, especially with the new Kerbstein engine, which is much more powerful and efficient, and is only 5m.

Edited June 7, 2017 by Axeon

[ss8913]

OK so I got a chance to try the Kerbstein drive... it certainly has potential!  I'm having 2 issues with it, one may be a bug(?):

1. I can't find a tank that holds Lithium Hydride.  I want more fuel than what it comes with... is there such a tank?
2. Tweakscaling it larger does not affect the thrust or ISP at all (this may be the bug?)

[FreeThinker]

18 hours ago, ss8913 said:

1. I can't find a tank that holds Lithium Hydride.  I want more fuel than what it comes with... is there such a tank?

LithiumHydrade can be stored in the KSPI/IFS Cargo container

[ss8913]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

LithiumHydrade can be stored in the KSPI/IFS Cargo container

ok,  I'll look for that.  as for the tweakscaling, yeah, I'm getting 3700 kN of thrust no matter how i tweakscale that engine.. is that intentional?

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, ss8913 said:

ok,  I'll look for that.  as for the tweakscaling, yeah, I'm getting 3700 kN of thrust no matter how i tweakscale that engine.. is that intentional?

no it's clearly a bug in the tweakscale configuration

On 7-6-2017 at 10:07 PM, Axeon said:

.S. "Vista" is now 10m only? Really? I've been using in on my spaceplane in its 3.75m variant, but 10... I can't even think of a scenario it would be useful in now, especially with the new Kerbstein engine, which is much more powerful and efficient, and is only 5m.

 

 

 

 

 

2

Yes, I made I made the VISTA more conforming it true design counterpart which has a diameter of 80 meters. The 10m version I consider a kerbalized version of the true VISTA engine and has about 1/10 the trust of the true 80m model (when fully upgraded) and a maximum isp if 27000s, which is still extremely good, especially for a first generation fusion rocket engine. It's only true disadvantage is its relatively large size, but this is intentional, to make competing technologies available at that tech level more interesting.

For sandbox/power users, I would advise the Kerbstein, which from a campaign perspective, I consider an end game, 5 generation fusion rocket engine. The engine performance (high trust combined with high Isp) itself is a form unobtanium, not handwavium which people might confuse it with. In campaign, the engine final stats are available after researching high density  (aneutronic) fusion technology and high end plasma propulsion technology.

Edited June 9, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

On 7-6-2017 at 10:07 PM, Axeon said:

Hi! I've encountered a pretty weird bug, that pretty much breaks by antimatter-powered spaceplane design. The small antimatter bottle doesn't seem to load properly in the world - it just detaches and floats there, and upon quicksaving/quickloading it just straight up disappears like it wasn't even there. I have plenty of mods, but I've reproduced it on a clean KSPI install to be sure, screenshots with descriptions attached. It

 

1

Good find, I will fix it ASAP. Notice that I recommend to use the full container. Be warned antimatter container are technically bombs if they are exposed to high Gee forces, they will explode

Edited June 9, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Axeon]

21 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Good find, I will fix it ASAP. Notice that I recommend to use the full container. Be warned antimatter container are technically bombs if they are exposed to high Gee forces, they will explode

Thanks, good to hear! Yeah, I am using an "Antimatter Containment Device" now, just had to tweak its max capacity to 2 grams in the vessel file since I'm playing in Campaign, and even the slightest tick of antimatter in its regular capacity costs several millions. (Unless there's some fine-fine tuning option that I'm unaware of)

Also, and this is definitely a bug, I'm pretty sure "Antimatter Containment Device Short" shouldn't cost almost 4 billion - while being empty, might I add

[FreeThinker]

13 hours ago, Axeon said:

Thanks, good to hear! Yeah, I am using an "Antimatter Containment Device" now, just had to tweak its max capacity to 2 grams in the vessel file since I'm playing in Campaign, and even the slightest tick of antimatter in its regular capacity costs several millions. (Unless there's some fine-fine tuning option that I'm unaware of)

Also, and this is definitely a bug, I'm pretty sure "Antimatter Containment Device Short" shouldn't cost almost 4 billion - while being empty, might I add

 

 

Good point. I plan to make the magnetic bottle store the antimatter magnetically (duh), this means it storage capacity is limited (like it used to be), but it will not suffer from the disadvantage of the high-density antimatter storage devices (how it used to be).

Edited June 9, 2017 by FreeThinker

[ss8913]

Now that I know how to store Li7H, the kerbstein drive is amazing... 4500t starship with 12 of those things, a 10m warp drive... pulls 40c at max weight, 1.5g sublight acceleration, 275km/s of dV.  Launch it with antimatter thermal launch nozzles (4x at 3.75m), detach in orbit, fire up the 12 kerbsteins and away we go   And that was just my first attempt.

However, @FreeThinker found a bug with the antimatter reactor - if it's  not working due to someone being dumb and forgetting to bring regular hydrogen... or if the crossfeed isn't allowing the hydrogen to get to the reactor... open reactor window, click disable, it immediately re-enables itself and works as though hydrogen was present even though it isn't.  Doing that on ONE antimatter reactor makes ALL the antimatter reactors on the craft that share the issue also work.  That seems like an "unintentional cheat"

[FreeThinker]

uploaded Version 1.14.3 for Kerbal Space Program 1.3.0 which can be downloaded from here

Released on 2017-06-11

• Added HeavyWater to some KSPI containers
• Added missing crustal resource definition by EvilGeorge
• Balance: turned Flat Antimatter tank into Electrostatic Antimatter Container which has the same amount of antimatter and behavior as originally
• Fixed Tritium breeding, which is now positively affected by amount of available Lithium-6 in the breeding blanket
• Fixed instant detachment Antimatter Bottle
• Fixed Tweakscaling Kerbstein Fusion Engine
• Fixed auto deployment for pivoting radiators
• Fixed EM drive quantum vacuum propellant high mass problem

Edited June 11, 2017 by FreeThinker

[ppparty]

Does anybody have any problems with the ISRU refinery.

At first with 1.2.2 the all in one ISRU didn't do everything it only did certain things.(This doesn't really matter)

Now with 1.3 the refinery constantly says that it is off line but the button functions (The ones that you don't need to go into the refinery window still function)

which brings me to the second problem the ISRU possessing window doesn't function(Rendering things like the electrolyzer useless)

[FreeThinker]

On 9-6-2017 at 9:13 PM, ss8913 said:

Now that I know how to store Li7H, the kerbstein drive is amazing... 4500t starship with 12 of those things, a 10m warp drive... pulls 40c at max weight, 1.5g sublight acceleration, 275km/s of dV.  Launch it with antimatter thermal launch nozzles (4x at 3.75m), detach in orbit, fire up the 12 kerbsteins and away we go   And that was just my first attempt.

I would love to see some pictures of this

[FreeThinker]

On 9-6-2017 at 10:50 AM, Axeon said:

Thanks, good to hear! Yeah, I am using an "Antimatter Containment Device" now, just had to tweak its max capacity to 2 grams in the vessel file since I'm playing in Campaign, and even the slightest tick of antimatter in its regular capacity costs several millions. (Unless there's some fine-fine tuning option that I'm unaware of)

Also, and this is definitely a bug, I'm pretty sure "Antimatter Containment Device Short" shouldn't cost almost 4 billion - while being empty, might I add

In KSPI 1.14.3 you can use the electrostatic antimatter confinement tank, which allows you to construct short range antimatter vessels again. This (relatively low) tech solution (avaialble with exotic science tech node) does not store antimatter as dense and efficient as the  the Diamagnetic Antimatter Containment Device (which requires extreme storage tech), but it is relatively cheap and wont blow up that fast. An empty tank wont break the bank either, so it allows you create antimatter farms

 

Edited June 11, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Axeon]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

In KSPI 1.14.3 you can use the electrostatic antimatter confinement tank, which allows you to construct short range antimatter vessels again. This (relatively low) tech solution (avaialble with exotic science tech node) does not store antimatter as dense and efficient as the  the Diamagnetic Antimatter Containment Device (which requires extreme storage tech), but it is relatively cheap and wont blow up that fast. An empty tank wont break the bank either, so it allows you create antimatter farms

 

That helps a lot, thanks! Downloading the update right now

[raxo2222]

It seems like scaling of tri-alpha fusion reactor wasn't changed, as still doesn't matter if single LiH tank + Tri-Alpha + Epstein engine is 5m size or 10m size stack for DV and TWR

It seems like GW/MN produced per ton of mass is constant for tri-alpha/epstein when comes to size of these parts.

 

Shouldn't all possible combinations of engines/reactors get benefit from bigger size?

That is if you use reactor X powering engine Y using propellant Z and you aim for certain DV, then bigger combination would result in better TWR (or you can use fixed TWR and have more DV)

Edited June 11, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

8 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

It seems like scaling of tri-alpha fusion reactor wasn't changed, as still doesn't matter if single LiH tank + Tri-Alpha + Epstein engine is 5m size or 10m size stack for DV and TWR

It appears the Tri Alpha was not tweakscaling correctly, which scale correct next patch. Notice that although tractor and engine get lighter when scaled up, radiator get relatively heaver when you scale them up, which is a consequence of the fact they depend on surface area which reactor power scale with volume

Edited June 11, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

8 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

It appears the Tri Alpha was not tweakscaling correctly, which scale correct next patch. Notice that although tractor and engine get lighter when scaled up, radiator get relatively heaver when you scale them up, which is a consequence of the fact they depend on surface area which reactor power scale with volume

So at certian size radiators may be even 50% of mass of starship?

So which engine with what properpallant protuces most MN per GW?

I remember kerosene-fueled thermal engines using Antimatter reactors had very high thrust.

Edited June 12, 2017 by raxo2222

[ss8913]

1 hour ago, raxo2222 said:

So at certian size radiators may be even 50% of mass of starship?

So which engine with what properpallant protuces most MN per GW?

I remember kerosene-fueled thermal engines using Antimatter reactors had very high thrust.

Antimatter + Hydrazine = lots of thrust.  If you want good ISP as well, use the Kerbstein fusion engines running on Li7H (Lithium Hydride).  This engine doesn't work in atmosphere however.

@FreeThinker you wanted to see that starship... here it is; this was made before you fixed the tweakscale config on the kerbsteins though, or I probably could have used quite a few less engines  - It uses OPT, MKS, KW, and of course KSPIE parts.  Of course this ship is useless for anything but flybys and station docking, as it is incapable of landing on anything with the way the radiator placement is.. might make an emergency landing on a non-atmospheric body if you did some tricky stuff, and there's no docking ports aligned to the center of mass, so towing a lander with this isn't possible;  working on a variant that CAN tow a spaceplane/lander however.

 

[Speadge]

Hi,

get some texture-missings in 14.3

i.e.

CryogenicTank_EMM.png, which is use in InterstellarFuelSwitch\Parts\TankRevamp\modelCT2504.mu

 

might want to check this?
Are u aware of those errors, or shall i mention the others as well?

 

[Axeon]

Hi again. Sorry to be "that guy", but found another bug, looks like introduced in 14.3 - Gigantor XL Solar Panels no longer work as actual solar panels... Even in VAB the only toggling options are "radiator" and "beamed power".

 

Never mind, it was I who broke something with new mods. Not sure what exactly, though. Turns out, it was a weird glitch with Kopernicus, reinstalling it clean fixed it.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Axeon

[Gordon Dry]

Would you provide a patch to include FARControllableSurface into the following part?

• WarpPlugin/Parts/Microwave/Hybridwings/heatfin/heatfin

I would much appreciate that.

Reason:

[ss8913]

@FreeThinker - my exploding-with-FTL-plus-timewarp thing is the gift that keeps on giving.  I have some new information.  it gets worse the more timewarp is used, the longer timewarp is used, and how many times I've done an F9 reload in the same session.  ie:

Attempt/Result pairs:

1 = get from 37Tm down to 35Tm towards Thallo (orbiting Trappist-1), at 1000x timewarp, 10.0c FTL speed.  Drops out of warp fine.  Push F5.  ok.
2 = get to 500Gm from Thallo, drop out of warp, *boom* massive explosion
3 = try only going to 15Tm, drop out of warp, *boom*
4 = try only going 1 extra Tm, at 100x timewarp instead of 1000x.  No explosion, but the craft skews apart yet somehow stays 'connected' even though there's huge gaps between the parts - which is *really really bizarre* and I took a picture (see below).  Again, the problems happen when exiting TIME warp.  everything goes south as soon as the Timewarp scale hits 1x.
 

 

[FreeThinker]

51 minutes ago, ss8913 said:

@FreeThinker - my exploding-with-FTL-plus-timewarp thing is the gift that keeps on giving.  I have some new information.  it gets worse the more timewarp is used, the longer timewarp is used, and how many times I've done an F9 reload in the same session.  ie:

Attempt/Result pairs:

1 = get from 37Tm down to 35Tm towards Thallo (orbiting Trappist-1), at 1000x timewarp, 10.0c FTL speed.  Drops out of warp fine.  Push F5.  ok.
2 = get to 500Gm from Thallo, drop out of warp, *boom* massive explosion
3 = try only going to 15Tm, drop out of warp, *boom*
4 = try only going 1 extra Tm, at 100x timewarp instead of 1000x.  No explosion, but the craft skews apart yet somehow stays 'connected' even though there's huge gaps between the parts - which is *really really bizarre* and I took a picture (see below).  Again, the problems happen when exiting TIME warp.  everything goes south as soon as the Timewarp scale hits 1x

When exploding, you should try to figure out what is actually exploding , perhaps there is still a Gforce jump, or it is something with the physics of the game.