[WIP][1.4.3] Exotic Solutions 0.6.1b

[Darinth]

Exotic Solution is ultimately designed to provide alternative methods of doing a lot of tasks. It firmly leaves the realm of real-world physics and goes well in to science fiction, but makes an attempt to maintain the physics-oriented gameplay inherent to KSP. The mod focuses around Exotic Materials and Exotic Energies. Exotic Materials have to be refined in a zero-g environment, but can then be utilized anywhere. Exotics Cores convert Exotic Materials into Exotic Energies, which then power the advanced technology. When a vessel is recovered with exotic materials/energies stored they are all converted into exotic materials and stored in the KSC and can be used to launch ship again. There is no buying/selling of exotic materials. Exotic Solutions is 'Balanced' around extended techtrees and the inability to buy exotic materials at the KSC, they must be produced and landed back at the KSC. I strongly recomend installing an extended tech tree for use with ES. Currently, I'm building in support for CTT. I'll be happy to accept pull requests for other tech trees and may be willing implement support for some of them if I can easily find the information I need to do so.

 

Part Types

Exotics Cores: Convert Exotic Materials into Exotic Energies. Conversion is very slow, refilling an EE core takes a couple days. Only a single core can be active on a vessel at any time and all inactive cores convert their stores of EE back to EM slowly, but still faster than the generation rate.

Exotic Variability Drives(EVEs): By default, these drives are slightly worse versions of drives available earlier on, however by expending exotic energy they can be given far more powerful thrust and ISP. Isp/thrust can be changed in flight, as it is increased the engine will consume progressively more EE.

Gravitic Drive: Runs on EE & EC, produces negative gravitational mass which effectively lifts the craft away from it's SOI with force proportional to gravity. Not able to produce propulsion laterally.

Refineries: Refine Exotic Materials. Must be refined in-orbit, exotic materials will not be able to be refined on the ground, they require zero-g environments for formation.

Kinetic Shunts: Capable of locking on to surface of celestial bodies or other crafts. Transfers momentum between itself and locked on target. Allows for a wide variety of powerful maneuvers with fairly minimal weight, but requires something to transfer momentum to.

Kinetic Catapults: Capable of locking onto two targets and transferring momentum between them. Capable of launching other objects without moving themselves.

Energy shield: Serve as a craft-wide heat shield and air resistance to slow you down on re-entry. Also be able to soak collision and allow parts (solar panels, radiators, antenna) to ignore aerodynamic forces as long as the shield holds. Water collisions are real funny, and I may not be able to fix this. I may ultimately remove all of the collision soaking capabilities, resulting in these acting entirely as advanced craft-wide heat shields and to a limited extent parachutes due to the atmospheric slowing. Also, currently the only things that cost shield energy are atmospheric reentry heat and collision. I haven't been able to figure out how to figure out the aero forces that are being applied to a part to take that into account.

 

[Not yet implemented]

Teleporter: Teleports stuff. Ideally, should be capable of teleporting resources, kerbals, and ships. Requires velocity matching to teleport.

Blink drive: Ship self-teleportation. Preserves momentum, but can instantly teleport several hundred kilometers. Precise distance transportation.

Mass inversion generator and/or tank: Reduces it's mass and the mass of nearby parts. Increases delta-v, can substantially increase craft manueverability by doing things like placing it on a gimbling engine or other nearby heavy parts.

 

Current Parts

Flat Exotics Cores (0.625m, 1.25m, 2.5m): Look like batteries of their size.

EVEs (0.625m, 1.25m, 2.5m): Look like existing engines of their appropriate size

Exotic Materials Refinery (2.5M): Looks like the science lab

Exotic Materials Containers (0.625m 20EM, 1.25m 50EM, 2.5 400EM, 3.75 1800EM): Look like small fuel tanks

Gravitic Drives (1.25m, 2.5m, 3.75m): Look like medium fuel tanks

Kinetic Shunt (1.25m, 2.5m): Look like ISRUs.

Kinetic Catapults (1.25m, 2.5m): Look like RA100 relay satelites.

Energy shields (1.25m, 2.5m): Custom models! Produce a 10m and 15m shield around the part.

 

Github

 

Images

Spoiler

 

SSTO with takeoff engine stats displayed.

 

SSTO with maximum engine stats displayed (Craft can'y produce enough EE to reach those stats)

 

Ship launching orbital refinery full of ore without access to EVEs for ascent

 

SSTO Refinery using EVEs

 

New imgur gallery

Old Imgur Gallery

Edited June 14, 2018 by Darinth
New stuff!

[IceTitan]

Sounds like a good concept. Can you add pictures?

[Darinth]

Posted up an image of a test craft and an imgur album of it in flight.

[Darinth]

Orbital refinery, Gravitic Drive, 2.5m EVE, and an EM tank added.

[Darinth]

Mostly full set of Flat cores, EVEs, Gravitic drives, EM Tanks, & a refinery.

[guesswho2778]

WOW this sounds amazing 

[guesswho2778]

On 5/3/2018 at 10:44 AM, Darinth said:

Energy shield: At a bare minimum, should serve as a craft-wide heat shield and air resistance to slow you down on re-entry). Ideally, should also be able to soak collision and allow parts (solar panels, radiators, antenna) to ignore aerodynamic forces as long as the shield holds.

im really looking forward to this

[Darinth]

Currently working on the inertial shunts/catapults which have actually turned out a lot of fun to play with, which is actually why they've taken a bit of time to get out. I may have spent a few hours building different crafts in attempts to do things like be able to make it to orbit exclusively on the propulsion they provide and seeing what their limitations are as far as orbital distance on their current stats.

Given where I'm looking to put stuff in the tech tree atm, the energy shields are next. Once they're done, I'm contemplating doing a balance pass and a first beta release as it'll be the first 2 big groups of technology complete and the EVEs later on.

[guesswho2778]

12 hours ago, Darinth said:

Currently working on the inertial shunts/catapults

i wonder if we could make a Dyson sphere with this

or am i misunderstanding what this means

Edited May 17, 2018 by guesswho2778

[Darinth]

There would be no way in ksp to build a dyson sphere. The project would be ludicrous. A dyson swarm... maybe. But either way inertial/kinetic shunts aren't a technonolgy that would be useful for this.

I expect their biggest uses are for near-celestial body maneuvers and space-station rendezvous, with the later having dangers related to changing your station's orbit (or even deorbiting it) on accident.

They allow you to transfer kinetic energy over distance. So, I apply thrust to an object in one direction, but must apply an equal and opposite thrust to another nearby object. If you're close enough to a celstial body, you can dump the kinetic energy into it giving you massive delta vs within a few km of the surface.

The earliest ones will only be able to apply a force to themself by dumping that force into another object. Later ones will be able to directly transfer kinetic energy between two nearby objects. I may make another tier beyond that with tremendous range, but that may be a bit too broken for my tastes.

[guesswho2778]

sorry i misunderstood what you meant got it now

[Darinth]

Been a bit since I updated, but really excited about this one. No energy shields yet, but the Kinetic tech is completed. I'm hoping to get a video made, I'm really happy with how this stuff has turned out. The first tier of it is designed to function similarly to atmospheric engines in that it's only useful close to celestial bodies, but it doesn't require air simply proximity to a planetary body. This makes it especially useful for maneuvering near airless bodies.

The second tier is more useful for stations and bases. It's much more capable for affecting other objects, giving it more capability for A:orbital rendezvous, B: launching things into orbit from airless planets, C: catching incoming crafts.

The kinetic tech has options for killing surface velocity and orbital velocity automatically, allowing for effective automated hovering of craft.

It also has options for relative velocity killing for ease of rendezvous.

[guesswho2778]

nice i hope you finish this mod it sounds great

[Darinth]

Aaaaaand Energy Shields! They feature my first custom made models, both a part model and the shield model are custom. I may actually remove the collision soaking capabilities from them. Realitsically, they're both A:not particularly useful, and B: a little wonky.

At this point, I'm just going to be revisiting some of my earlier parts and updating their mechanics and then running a balance pass. Most of the 1st 4 tiers of tech that I'm planning are implemented. After the balance pass, I'm planning to release the first official beta. If anybody wants to look at it, github does have an alpha release up-to-date with this morning's work.

[guesswho2778]

cool ill have a look now

Edit: sorry cant look now maybe in the afternoon

Edited June 5, 2018 by guesswho2778

[guesswho2778]

i had a look at the energy shields and maybe you could remove the collisions with the ground but keep collisions with parts (if thats possible) oh and none of the other parts are showing up for me i can see them in the folder but not in the game

[Darinth]

I'm going to guess you've got something installed incorrectly or may simply be having trouble finding them. A number of the parts are difficult to spot because they look like squad parts. Folder structure should be "Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Exotic Solutions". The Exotic Solutions folder should have CTT.cfg, Resources.cfg, ExoticSolutions.version, and the parts & plugins folders under it. If it looks right let me know. It's possible I've done something odd.

Also, just uploaded a new version to github. Rework of the EVE drives, gravitic drives, and a balance pass on the kinetic tech.

Edit: Also, I don't think it's possible to have part collision without ground collision.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Darinth

[guesswho2778]

1 ive installed it correctly 

2 yes maybe i just didnt notice it

3 nice

4 oh  it'd be nice if i could turn them off at least

[Darinth]

Will probably move all most of the parts into the science catagory and make sure that they've all got tags on them to easily find them.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Darinth

[Darinth]

New release on github.

Changes:

Only one exotic core active on a vessel at a time, inactive exotic cores slowly turn EE back into EM.
Added es exotic solutions ee energy energies tags to all modules. Added a variety of other tags to parts as needed.

Part recategorization
Moved cores to science, drives to engine.
 

[guesswho2778]

i wish i could help but i dont know how

i can make parts (almost) from scratch i just dont have the software to model them

also you should put this up on spacedock you might get more visitors in this thread

[Darinth]

@guesswho2778 All of the software you need to do modeling is available for free. Blender and Unity are both completely free to use for these purposes. That said, right now I just need to know if it works. Were you able to find the rest of the parts and have you noticed any issues with them?

Spacedock is probably not particularly likely. I'll probably rely on the forums and possibly CKAN at some point, though that's not a priority atm. I'll probably be making a release thread if what I have to date seems to be all in working order.

[guesswho2778]

yeah i know its free it just my laptop is fairly basic and dosnt have much free space my ksp folder is just about 7 GB though since the newest update i have had to delete all of my "archived" mods so i might have enough space for unity

oh and yes i found the parts and they seem to be working fine

[Darinth]

Release thread is now up.