[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11

[LadyAthena]

I seem to be having serious issues completing a particular field science. "Recover rare research from Kerbins Waters"
 

I'll go to the marker, land, both check out. I'llthen collect the EVA, and Crew Reports.. Nothing.. I never get it checked off.

if I transmit the science, nothing.

If I bring it back without transmitting, nothing..

[Cruesoe]

13 minutes ago, LadyAthena said:

I seem to be having serious issues completing a particular field science. "Recover rare research from Kerbins Waters"
 

I'll go to the marker, land, both check out. I'llthen collect the EVA, and Crew Reports.. Nothing.. I never get it checked off.

if I transmit the science, nothing.

If I bring it back without transmitting, nothing..

Kerbalism doesn't support the field science contracts.

[LadyAthena]

20 minutes ago, Cruesoe said:

Kerbalism doesn't support the field science contracts.

Seriously? I didn't see anywhere it said this.

So the more I'm looking into it, the more Kerbalism just seems like a dead weight mod. All the good additional mods to make KSP awesome are no longer supported by Kerbalism, such as Remote Tech and others, and while I love the way the science works in  Kerbalism, not worth the hassle when the mod itself barely functions half the time due to inconsistencies, and not even supporting base stock code in KSP like Field Research...

[eberkain]

1 hour ago, LadyAthena said:

Seriously? I didn't see anywhere it said this.

So the more I'm looking into it, the more Kerbalism just seems like a dead weight mod. All the good additional mods to make KSP awesome are no longer supported by Kerbalism, such as Remote Tech and others, and while I love the way the science works in  Kerbalism, not worth the hassle when the mod itself barely functions half the time due to inconsistencies, and not even supporting base stock code in KSP like Field Research...

Kerbalism is getting a major redesign for 4.0, so no idea how everything will land when the dust settles. 

https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/commit/41e40ff83050236c029c51f19528ac894f531947

 

[LadyAthena]

3 minutes ago, eberkain said:

Kerbalism is getting a major redesign for 4.0, so no idea how everything will land when the dust settles. 

https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/commit/41e40ff83050236c029c51f19528ac894f531947

 

Oh wow, well that at least revitalizes my interest.. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

[king of nowhere]

20 hours ago, LadyAthena said:

Seriously? I didn't see anywhere it said this.

So the more I'm looking into it, the more Kerbalism just seems like a dead weight mod. All the good additional mods to make KSP awesome are no longer supported by Kerbalism, such as Remote Tech and others, and while I love the way the science works in  Kerbalism, not worth the hassle when the mod itself barely functions half the time due to inconsistencies, and not even supporting base stock code in KSP like Field Research...

science is only the least part of kerbalism. frankly, 90% of the times it doesn't really make any difference, you just wait in orbit/EVA/landed a bit before getting the data.

kerbalism is good for all the thing it does with life support. I found myself at a point where i could do pretty much anything in the stock game, adding life support included a new level of complication to keep things interesting.

my main beef with it is the lack of explanation. including lack of people answering me when i ask stuff. the stock game is also very lacking in that regard, but at least i can spam questions in the dedicated subforum.

[Gotmachine]

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

my main beef with it is the lack of explanation. including lack of people answering me when i ask stuff

1. Most of your questions have answers on the github wiki.
2. Personally, I don't check that forum often and I don't think regular Kerbalism users come here often either. If you want to chat about Kerbalism, the Kerbalism Discord server is much more appropriate.

Regarding you comments on the automation triggers, see https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/issues/638 and https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/issues/643

[king of nowhere]

i'm not surprised that my questions would have been answered somewhere. good luck finding those answers, though. and I had no idea there was a dedicated discord server. i'm sure that information is also out there somewhere, buried among plenty of other useful informations. that's the problem with useful informations. also, for some reasons i am not comfortable with either github or discord.

 

by the way, i want to reiterate my appreciation for this mod and the people working on it (because i assume it's more than one). just because i argue about the minutiae it doesn't mean i'm not  happy about it

[mcwaffles2003]

18 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

i'm not surprised that my questions would have been answered somewhere. good luck finding those answers, though. and I had no idea there was a dedicated discord server. i'm sure that information is also out there somewhere, buried among plenty of other useful informations.

Literally, in the original post....

Quote

Docs & support: Github wiki - Discord - Github issues

 

18 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

that's the problem with useful informations. also, for some reasons i am not comfortable with either github or discord.

Dude... you just asked where to find the info... Now the info isn't in a place of your choosing? How picky do you get O_o?

[king of nowhere]

3 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Literally, in the original post....

your claim is patently misleading. there's no pointer called "docs and support" there - i may have recognized one as such.

there is the github link, indeed, as documentation. with a warning that it's outdated. the first time i installed the game i missed it (there are dozens of useful links, it's easy to miss something). after learning something by tinkering, i found the github. and it helped clear some things. for others, it was actually misleading, referring to something outdated.

then there is the "support". it was specifically labeled as bug report. Not "help". Not "support". Not "forum", "discussion" or anything. Bug. Report. As i didn't have bugs to report, i had no way to know those were also to ask questions.

Please don't resent me for not seeing that those things could actually refer to my problems. I do not resent you or anyone else for lack of clarity. In fact, I am a teacher, and doing this job i learned that there's no such thing as a good, working explanation on a complex topic. if it's clear, then it's leaving out all the details. if it tries to include the details, it gets too complicated and important stuff will be overlooked. The original post is well done. it is nonetheless confusing. the documentation is well done. it is nonetheless lacking.

[mcwaffles2003]

1 minute ago, king of nowhere said:

your claim is patently misleading. there's no pointer called "docs and support" there - i may have recognized one as such.

It's right towards the top...

Quote

Current version: 3.11

What's new: New and Noteworthy
Download: Github - SpaceDock - CKAN
Docs & support: Github wiki - Discord - Github issues
License: Unlicense (unless stated otherwise, parts might be licensed differently)  
KSP version: 1.5.x - 1.10.x  
Requires: Module Manager, CommunityResourcePack  
See also: Mod compatibility - Change Log - Dev Builds

 

3 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

then there is the "support". it was specifically labeled as bug report. Not "help". Not "support". Not "forum", "discussion" or anything. Bug. Report. As i didn't have bugs to report, i had no way to know those were also to ask questions.

If you're looking for quick back and fourth discord is useful for that

[king of nowhere]

8 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

It's right towards the top...

huh... i missed that

either that, or the way it was just below the dowload i assumed it was technical documents

Edited January 8, 2021 by king of nowhere

[Gotmachine]

48 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

your claim is patently misleading. there's no pointer called "docs and support" there - i may have recognized one as such.

Which, like the content of your other posts, tell me that your making zero effort in searching for answers before spamming this thread.
I don't really care and I have nothing against you, but don't expect me to make an effort answering you.

And yes, the documentation and the mod aren't perfect. Far from it.
This isn't a product, this is a very time-consuming hobby contributed by whoever has the courage or skill to help and share their work for free.
We value people giving feedback and are usually open to discussion and accept contributions if they wish to help, but as I said, this thread isn't the preferred communication channel.

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

Which, like the content of your other posts, tell me that your making zero effort in searching for answers before spamming this thread.

please, calm down. i recognize that a lot of stuff i asked is actually written in a way that's reasonably within reach (a lot of other stuff, though, isn't), and i apologize for spamming this thread.

but i'm putting much more effort in finding that content than you give me credit for. I did read the FAQ page, the wiki link (that's basically an intro, at the time i missed the additional pages), the readme, and a few pages that were linked to me. and everything i could find in the in-game tabs. and it was already enough information that a lot of it went over me. i still missed a lot of stuff, but i did try to read before asking. and, as i said, i'm uncomfortable with github. BY that i mean, i don't get github. i can't figure out how it's made, how to do stuff in it. I don't know why. it doesn't really seem that different from a forum, or a wiki. but i look at a page, and i go in confusion.

And  just because something is written down in a manual, it's not a good reason not to ask. Look at the question section of the forum, 95% of the stuff that gets asked could easily be solved by pointing people to some tutorial. now, what kind of community would this be if every time some new guy full of enthusiasm went and asked something we were all "you clearly are making no effort at this, because in the front page there is the list of tutorials, and from there you'd eventually find your answer"? If "it's written in a book, go read it" was a good way to learn, my job wouldn't exhist. But then, perhaps I am a teacher specifically because I have the patience to tolerate people asking silly questions until eventually they arrive at the smart ones.

Anyway, sorry for being a bother and for my mild IT incompetence. I will try harder to look on github in the future, especially now that i've seen a bit better how to navigate it.

[OnlyLightMatters]

Hi Team!
I have noticed while designing a ship for Duna that I have 12% of water in the atmosphere (reported by the orbital survey) but no way to harvest this ressource via the atmospheric filter.
Is it a will of the mod's designers or is it something that could be amended in a next update?

Thanks for your response and thanks again for making this wonderful mod!

[Gotmachine]

1 hour ago, OnlyLightMatters said:

I have noticed while designing a ship for Duna that I have 12% of water in the atmosphere (reported by the orbital survey) but no way to harvest this ressource via the atmospheric filter.

The orbital survey data is a bit misleading in that it doesn't account for the atmospheric density, which mean that in reality you get 0.06 % of 12% -> 0.72%.
Also note that this definition comes from CRP, not Kerbalism, and that the CRP abundance is generic for all atmospheric bodies, and can vary from 0.1 to 50%.
IRL, Mars atmospheric water content is more in the ballpark of 0.02%.

Regardless, last time I checked, the consensus on atmospheric water extraction on Mars (aka Duna) is that while it is theoretically feasible, it would be extremely inefficient.
To get any meaningful amounts of water you would have to use huge electric powered compressors, and even then the quantities extracted would make this viable only for small scale applications like compensating a closed loop ECLSS losses.

This being said, some of the other IRSU options we have are as questionable from a realism standpoint, so maybe it would make sense to have that one.
However, even if we do, like some other options, this will be so inefficient and limited that you likely wouldn't be able to use it for anything else than ECLSS needs.
Given that we have a recurrent issue of people thinking they can refuel their ships like in stock just because those inefficient and small scale processes exists, I'm a bit reluctant to add more of them.
For example, see the recent discussion in this thread about the molten regolith process. As far as I can tell this is something that people often get frustrated about.

We should probably better advertise that the ISRU options are based on what is possible IRL, that large scale offworld operations are quite challenging and that you won't be able to build massive refueling bases like in stock.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Gotmachine

[JupiterJaeden]

On 12/14/2020 at 1:01 AM, Gotmachine said:

RemoteTech is unsupported in current (3.x) releases, and my advice is to not try to use both mods together. There are many bugs, and even that put aside, the balance is all over the place

We have fixed the RemoteTech support code in the in-development next major Kerbalism version (4.0), but there is currently no playable release of that version, and we have no ETA on a release.

If you want a realism oriented comms mod, I would suggest looking at RealAntennas which is available for stock and fully compatible with Kerbalism.

Hey Gotmachine,
I was looking more into this because I'm still super hyped to start using Kerbalism, and I noticed that you actually wrote a patch to get the RemoteTech support code working: https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/commit/95c8bcda9be538075c09974c6d622708c287287d?branch=95c8bcda9be538075c09974c6d622708c287287d&diff=unified

So this is obviously supposed to be a part of the 4.0 release, but I was wondering if there was some way I could build my own version of Kerbalism just with this patch? Normally this might be really impractical, but it's such a small patch that fixes like 2 minor bugs. The reason I'm asking you is because I would have no clue how to do this. Could you give me any pointers?

Also, I'm curious now what you mean by the balance being messed up. On the github issues page, I could only find 2 relatively minor RemoteTech bugs (https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/issues/436), neither of which really seems to make the game unplayable in any way.  Could you elaborate?

Thanks,
JupiterJaeden

EDIT: Also do you ever plan on updating MandatoryRCS? It seems pretty cool 

Edited January 11, 2021 by JupiterJaeden

[Gotmachine]

10 minutes ago, JupiterJaeden said:

Normally this might be really impractical, but it's such a small patch that fixes like 2 minor bugs.

Far from it. The code that handle comms was rewritten nearly from scratch for Kerbalism 4
The commit you linked was a quick and dirty fix in the middle of that rewrite, after that I rewrote the RemoteTech support entirely (it was either that, or dropping it altogether).
It should be possible to backport the new 4.x comms implementation to 3.x, but even assuming you know you way around C# code, this isn't a trivial task.

14 minutes ago, JupiterJaeden said:

I could only find 2 relatively minor RemoteTech bugs (https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/issues/436), neither of which really seems to make the game unplayable in any way.  Could you elaborate?

Those aren't minor, and the 3.x support code is borked in many ways (and TBH, the whole 3.x comms implementation is an ugly mess). That's why I rewrote it from scratch.
Also note that while I  tested that new code a bit, it hasn't been extensively playtested (so it is likely to have bugs), and there is also a complete lack of support configs for correctly balancing the RT antennas data rates (like what we have for stock CommNet).

25 minutes ago, JupiterJaeden said:

The reason I'm asking you is because I would have no clue how to do this. Could you give me any pointers?

If you don't know programming / C#, there is way too much for you to learn before you can do that by yourself... This is quite a lot more complex than making a KSP config file.

26 minutes ago, JupiterJaeden said:

Also do you ever plan on updating MandatoryRCS

Plans, yes. Time and motivation, no, unfortunately.

[JupiterJaeden]

34 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

Far from it. The code that handle comms was rewritten nearly from scratch for Kerbalism 4
The commit you linked was a quick and dirty fix in the middle of that rewrite, after that I rewrote the RemoteTech support entirely (it was either that, or dropping it altogether).
It should be possible to backport the new 4.x comms implementation to 3.x, but even assuming you know you way around C# code, this isn't a trivial task.

Those aren't minor, and the 3.x support code is borked in many ways (and TBH, the whole 3.x comms implementation is an ugly mess). That's why I rewrote it from scratch.
Also note that while I  tested that new code a bit, it hasn't been extensively playtested (so it is likely to have bugs), and there is also a complete lack of support configs for correctly balancing the RT antennas data rates (like what we have for stock CommNet).

If you don't know programming / C#, there is way too much for you to learn before you can do that by yourself... This is quite a lot more complex than making a KSP config file.

Plans, yes. Time and motivation, no, unfortunately.

Ah okay, I didn't realize that the whole comms code was rewritten. Nevermind then. 

I do actually know some C# programming, I was more asking how the KSP modding stuff works. But I can see that's not going to work. 

I might just accept the bugs for now and use them together anyways, or maybe I'll just drop RemoteTech. Or I might just look for some other mods that do similar things as Kerbalism. 

In any case, I'll definitely keep an eye out for the 4.0 release. Thanks for the answers!

[ola]

On 12/17/2020 at 10:46 AM, Gotmachine said:

We already have that : https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/wiki/PlayGuide-~-Resources

The stock ISRU options don't exists in Kerbalism.

And stress. And LS resources supplies. And reliability.

Of course I'm talking about default Kerbalism difficulty, and without mods that make make things too easy (hypothetical overpowerful engines or deepfreeze for example).
Even at the easiest settings, manned missions that take more than a few years are almost impossible in practice.

I daresay that radiation is the biggest concern of all the above mentioned. The rest of them are all solvable by the ancient and true KSP maxim "add more boosters". Radiation, however, seems to be way more difficult to handle once mission durations are above a year or so. With chemical plants, greenhouses and so forth, it's possible to save up on several years' worth of LS resources. Stress is easily relievable with enough living space and "toys". Radiation seems impossible to manage, even with active shields, max passive shielding and a properly oriented craft with a huge tank at the correct end. And those RDUs don't seem to matter much.

But it's a small price to pay for the enormous increase in playability.

[123nick]

Will Kerbalism feature compatability with Galaxies Unbound: A stellar Oddysey? found here: 

it adds  a lot of new systems, i assume they need radiation definitions? and i didnt see it listed in the compatability list.

[king of nowhere]

On 1/9/2021 at 3:49 PM, Gotmachine said:

We should probably better advertise that the ISRU options are based on what is possible IRL, that large scale offworld operations are quite challenging and that you won't be able to build massive refueling bases like in stock.

On the other hand, there are also some realistic ISRU options that are not possible in kerbalism, most notably plain water into rocket fuel.

But yes, advertising the fact would indeed be good. my frustration about the molten regolith came from a misunderstanding, where i assumed "ore=stuff good to make fuel = carbon-rich rock", while the assumption was "ore=common lunar regolith, poor in carbon".

On 1/14/2021 at 5:20 PM, ola said:

I daresay that radiation is the biggest concern of all the above mentioned. The rest of them are all solvable by the ancient and true KSP maxim "add more boosters". Radiation, however, seems to be way more difficult to handle once mission durations are above a year or so. With chemical plants, greenhouses and so forth, it's possible to save up on several years' worth of LS resources. Stress is easily relievable with enough living space and "toys". Radiation seems impossible to manage, even with active shields, max passive shielding and a properly oriented craft with a huge tank at the correct end. And those RDUs don't seem to matter much.

But it's a small price to pay for the enormous increase in playability.

i did solve radiations with brute force, by adding 120 active shields. of course, you are unlikely to afford that in a regular career mission...

on the other hand, I did spot a bug with radiations and time warp. time warping through solar storms caused my kerbonauts to suffer more damage, while they were less affected otherwise. I will try reporting it on github, since that's apparently the preferred method. Anyway, you can try that: activate notification for storms, and when there is a storm raging, keep time warp limited to x1000. it's made a huge difference for me, in that, all else being equal, time warping at x1000000 caused my crew to die in 200 days (with 90% shielding, a big fuel tank for protection, and the habitat sensors insisting radiation was "nominal"); while limiting myself at x1000, i am now 100 days in, and my crew got exactly 0% radiation damage.

 

on the other hand, i had large problems with stress; giving plenty of living space and comfort was not enough and i had the first accidents after one year, despite the VAB screen telling me stress should be in check for 20 years. I could only protect from stress by having a large amount of redundant parts.

On the other hand, i had a much less luxurious ship, and the crew in that didn't have any stress problem. So, I'm thinking that one is also a bug, and it's something else i'll try to report

Edited January 17, 2021 by king of nowhere

[Gotmachine]

5 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

there are also some realistic ISRU options that are not possible in kerbalism, most notably plain water into rocket fuel

Because the convention in the modding scene is that "LiquidFuel" is not hydrogen. The density doesn't match, the ISP and general engine stats don't match.
It's much closer to kerosene or methane, and consequently the ISRU options are those of methane.
Hydrogen is widely used in major mods as a distinct fuel, with corresponding engines and fuel tanks. You can do ISRU in Kerbalism to produce hydrogen that you can use in those engines.
If everything could produce LF, there would be no point in having somewhat realistic ISRU chains instead of the basic stock Ore -> LiquidFuel conversion.

16 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

on the other hand, I did spot a bug with radiations and time warp. time warping through solar storms caused my kerbonauts to suffer more damage, while they were less affected otherwise.

That's a known issue. In general (not only for storms), radiation exposure is inconsistent depending on the timewarp rate. That cannot be fixed easily and likely won't be fixed anytime soon.

18 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

i had the first accidents after one year, despite the VAB screen telling me stress should be in check for 20 years

You can have breakdowns at any stress level. You can change that in the difficulty settings.

[king of nowhere]

3 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

Because the convention in the modding scene is that "LiquidFuel" is not hydrogen. The density doesn't match, the ISP and general engine stats don't match.
 

i wasn't trying to restart that argument. i accept the motivations given. Just saying that at some point you have to pick between realism and complexity.

Quote

That's a known issue. In general (not only for storms), radiation exposure is inconsistent depending on the timewarp rate. That cannot be fixed easily and likely won't be fixed anytime soon.

oh, ok. no need for report.

wait, something can be done: a message. there is already a message with chemical plants and time warp, when some processes will automatically block a time warp when they would be bugged. a similar warning would at least avoid the player seeing "radiation: nominal" and seeing his crew die without knowing the reason.

even just mentioning it in the play guide would help

Quote

You can have breakdowns at any stress level. You can change that in the difficulty settings.

i know, i once had one in the first day of mission.

no, i'm talking specifically of reaching 100% stress level. the behavior seems inconsistent.

[KIMCHI]

I am seeing this error pop up using RO/RP1/RSS:

2 errors related to GameData/KerbalismConfig/Support/SXT.cfg