Actual-size overhaul

[Nightside]

I’m working on a “light weight” alternative to Realism Overhaul to use with RSS or 10x Kerbin.

The mod will resize parts to realish sizes and resource volumes, but maintain the stock “LEGO-style “ rocket building experience. The patch should work for almost all mods.

 

Here is my question for discussion: what “Real” features are important for enjoyable gameplay? Why?

[AVaughan]

Obviously everyone will have a different opinion.  

Personally for a mod like that I would want:

• Compatibility with procedural tanks and fairings, FAR, KIS/KAS, real chutes (or FAR's real chutes lite implementation, but with more available chutes sizes than stock KSP), KCT, scansat, life support mods.  I'm guessing most of that will 'just work', although tank size unlocks might need tweaking in the tech tree.  Maybe also want to tweak some of the science part sizes.  
• Surface attachable engines for all (or almost all) engines.  (So that engine clustering without thrust plates/adapters is viable.  With procedural tanks and fairings, this means booster diameter/design becomes a player decision, rather than being dictated by the available tanks/engines.
• Optionally an unmanned before manned approach (An optional mod changing tech tree and maybe available missions would be fine).
• Optionally a real fuels lite/real engine lite approach.  Split engines into 6 or so fuel types.   Solid fuel, RP-1 + Lox, Liquid hydrogen + Lox, hypergolic, ion, nuclear with hydrogen/methane/ammonia.  Optionally maybe add methane + Lox late in the tech tree.  (Maybe just consider KSP's fuel + oxidiser to be RP-1 + Lox and monoprop to be hypergolic.  That allows an automatic minimum level of compatibility with engines added by mods without compatibility patches).  Engines with different performance characteristics (isp curve, twr, max burn time, restart capabilities, engine vectoring, throttability, fuel density, fuel boil-off) add to potentially interesting design time choices and trade offs.  Personally I don't need ullage requirements or test flight type random failures (far too often I simply revert or reload if test flight kills an engine during launch, but limited relights and a deterministic max burn time adds potentially interesting design time constraints).  Similarly I don't need RP-0's highly pressurised tanks.  I think that it is better if KER/mechjeb will show zero dV if the wrong fuel/tank type is selected for a stage.  That is preferable to getting suborbital over the Mun and discovering that your landing engine won't start because the fuel tank isn't highly pressurised.  Similarly make any insulated tanks visually distinct from non-insulated tanks, so that provided players grab the right tank type in the VAB, they don't suddenly discover that half their fuel has boiled off just because they didn't toggle insulation in the VAB.  Maybe only allow insulated tanks to be used for fuels subjected to boil-off.  Possibly have a tech tree unlock for upgraded insulation for reduced boil-off for longer missions, again meaning that once you have it unlocked in the tech tree, you don't need to toggle it on individual tanks to get the benefit. 
• If you have the different fuel types from the above, then ISRU should be adjusted so that not all fuels can be refined on every planet/biome.  Again more design time considerations that affect the choice of fuel/engine.
• Some players will want reaction wheels nerfed (some players will even want them removed).  I'm fine with nerfs, as long as MechJeb/Stock SAS can hold an alignment before/during a burn.  (Assuming a symmetrically balanced spacecraft).  Relying on RCS to hold attitude for all maneuvers seems to lead to oscillations and too much wasted monoprop.  Leaving reaction wheels torque untouched when you rescale mass and length should already be a significant nerf.  A lite version of persistent rotation (only need the bit of persistent rotation where rotation isn't stopped by timewarping or switching scenes).
• Some players will want Remotetech integration.  Personally I'd be fine without it (stock's comnet is enough for an RO-lite.  I always find remotetech's flight computer to be too limiting and awkward to actually use.  Plus I'm still annoyed by the times it just cannot reliably point a vessel without reaction wheels towards a reaction node.  Far too often it just oscillates around the node, wasting rcs.  I still remember the time it burnt through a vessels entire 1200 m/s of dV trying to execute a 400m/s Lunar capture burn, and was still on an escape trajectory.  These days I would just manually align and spin up whilst have a connection, then just have remotetech's computer burn for the appropriate number of seconds for any burn that is required without a connection).  If you want a Remotetech lite implementation then ditch the com delay, allow antennas to be deployed/pointed without a connection.  (So that missions aren't toast if you are late deploying your antenna, and for easier handling of antennas for landers on bodies with an atmosphere).  Possibly allow the player to manually execute full throttle engine and rcs burns without a connection, but require a connection for manipulating maneuver nodes and science transmission.
• Might also need landing legs in either more sizes or a larger range of sizes than stock.  (The tiny legs are potentially still the right size for small unmanned landers, even without being rescaled.  The large ones are potentially too small for a large lander, especially a single stage to orbit ISRU refinery/tanker, even if they are rescaled by the same amount as capsules/tank etc).  Might be solved by just using different scaling factors for each of the stock legs, and/or adding a couple of copies stock landing legs with different scale factors.
• One thing I haven't talked about (but which is probably implicit is some of the points above is the scale factor.  If we want to go realistic, but with round numbers, then a Mercury capsule was roughly 2m in diameter, Gemini was 3m, Apollo was 4m, Orion is 5m.  So from that view point using tank and engine sizes in multiples of 1m seems reasonable.  But even 1m seems large for probe cores.  (Google says Sputnik 1 was 58cm).  So I'd be tempted not to rescale probe cores and some of the tiny probe class engines by the same factor as some of the large engines.  Maybe even leave some of the probe cores at stock scales.  If we are talking tanks sizes without using procedural parts or tweakscale, then I think I'd probably want a 0.5m (or 0.625m) size 0, then a 1m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m, 3m, 4m, 5m size progression of tanks/fairings/heatshields/adaptors to give the player adequate choices and smoother transitions form one size to another.   There are also plenty of stock parts where the size and mass just don't make sense. (Rockomax multihub 1.5 tons !!  Also why isn't this a 2.5m part.  It's only real use is in space stations, where most stock modules are 2.5m).    When rescaling it would be nice to fix some of these for a more reasonable size and mass, rather than just use a blanket rule to rescale everything by the same amount.

I realise this isn't quite what you are asking for, (and adding all those lite implementations of existing mods is probably too much work, unless you can convince the corresponding RO versions to accept patches to add an optional lite mode) but it's my thoughts on something that is a lightweight alternative to RO.  There is also Sufficiently Realistic Progression Zero by @NotTheRealRMS that might provide some ideas/an opportunity for collaboration.  https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/154041-wip131-sufficiently-realistic-progression-zero/ .

 

 

 

[Tyko]

On 9/8/2018 at 6:19 PM, Nightside said:

I’m working on a “light weight” alternative to Realism Overhaul to use with RSS or 10x Kerbin.

The mod will resize parts to realish sizes and resource volumes, but maintain the stock “LEGO-style “ rocket building experience. The patch should work for almost all mods.

 

Here is my question for discussion: what “Real” features are important for enjoyable gameplay? Why?

One option which would be less work would be to use a 2.5x or 3.2x scaled system. At those scales stock parts offer similar capabilities to Real Life parts in a 10x system. You'll need multi-stage rockets to achieve orbit and 3 stage rockets for most manned missions.

This might be easier than creating a whole new mod and gives you immediate access to tons of parts like BDB, Tantares, KW Rocketry, etc.

[Nightside]

@AVaughan, wow, thanks for the ideas, i’ll Have to go back through this when I’m not on mobile, but definitely I will have to do surface attached engines, KIS, and I really like the idea of leaving the probe cores small. The difference between the size of the spacecraft and the launcher is one of the most impressive aspects of space flight, to me.

 

@Tyko, I’ve actually already got generic resizing working in Transmogrifier. Alongside SMURFF, it gives pretty realistic performance. It should also work for most parts mods without any extra work. 

 

[AVaughan]

On 9/9/2018 at 3:24 PM, AVaughan said:

Some players will want reaction wheels nerfed (some players will even want them removed).  I'm fine with nerfs, as long as MechJeb/Stock SAS can hold an alignment before/during a burn.  (Assuming a symmetrically balanced spacecraft).  Relying on RCS to hold attitude for all maneuvers seems to lead to oscillations and too much wasted monoprop.  Leaving reaction wheels torque untouched when you rescale mass and length should already be a significant nerf.  A lite version of persistent rotation (only need the bit of persistent rotation where rotation isn't stopped by timewarping or switching scenes).

I think that Mandatory RCS does most of this.  (I've not tried it myself, so that opinion is based on the forum OP).

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/154658-141-mandatoryrcs-15-part-pack-11-reaction-wheels-nerf-sas-rotation-persistence/ 

 

[Nightside]

Test release of Actual-Sized Transmogrified Rocket Overhaul or ASTRO is available on github. At this point it is a very simple mod to allow a stockalike playstyle with real sized rockets. RSS or 10x scale system is recommended. 

This mod is expands on the Transmogrifier I made a while back but focuses it on real-scale systems.

I'll make a proper OP for it soon.
 

Requires Module Manager and SMURFF (not included).

Don't use in existing saves, will break all craft files, etc, etc

Edited September 12, 2018 by Nightside