[1.5 - 1.10] Kerbalism 3.11

[Gotmachine]

On 2/10/2021 at 4:10 PM, Ollz said:

So No (Sustainable Crewed) Space Stations?

You technically can do it, but radiation, stress and failures will quickly get in the way. ISRU is limited to "realistic" options, so apart from a few specific places, you won't escape resupply missions .
Kerbalism isn't very well balanced for the "space colonization" gameplay style and the experience is a bit frustrating IMO, but there are people enjoying it.

[king of nowhere]

On 2/10/2021 at 3:35 PM, Ollz said:

Can Kerbalism Create Sustainable Planetary and Orbital Bases (Can You generate Food, Water and Oxygen Sustainably On the Surface Of A Planet or On an Orbiting Station without Constant Micromanagement/Constant Cargo Resupply Missions?)

 

On 2/10/2021 at 4:10 PM, Ollz said:

So No (Sustainable Crewed) Space Stations?

while there are many options to recycle stuff, there are always losses. you never recover 100%. which suits me well, in reality you don't recycle 100% either. though greenhouses definitely need a buff, i summed up all the numbers and discovered that, even considering recycling wastes, it takes 4 kg of resources to produce 2 kg of food and oxygen. though greenhouses let you transform raw materials from a planet into food.

with some big pressurized tanks you can last for decades, though. my mothership has been running almost 20 years now, 15 years since last resupply, with a crew of 9. long term stations are definitely possible.

ground station sustaining indefinitely can exhist, since they can generate anything with resources from the planet. you can get full protection from radiation too. the only unsurmountable limit is stress. when stress reaches 100%, you get something bad. sometimes you get lucky, and nothing happens. sometimes you lose 10% of a random resource, if you are mining a planet it's not a problem. sometimes a random part is broken, though, and some of those times it cannot get fixed. so, nothing will last forever. again, my mothership has been running almost 20 years, and it has several broken pieces by now, but it's still going strong. you can't last forever, but you can last many decades with proper redundancies. as for normal malfunctions (those induced by aging and decay), they can be prevented almost entirely by having an engineer run periodic checks on everything.

as for resources, they are tricky, because they are hard to find. we can focus on the four elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as everything else can be derived from those

- oxygen is very common. molthen regolith electrolysis will get it in large amounts almost everywhere. no worries here

- hydrogen is found in water. water is rather scarce, but you can find it in the poles of most planets. sometimes you also find it in some specific biomes  in each planet, but it's very rare. it should definitely be more abundant; minmus is described as an iceball, yet it has very little water. all the moons of jool should be very rich in water - it's the single most common chemical compound in the outer solar system  - but again, it's limited to few places. last time i tried, bop had some in all biomes, pol had nothing. anyway, you can find water on most planets, and it's not hard to mine. getting hydrogen out of water is energy intensive, but manageable

- nitrogen is very rare. most planets don't have any. duna has some, but ground concentration never exceeds 2.5%. and the drills can't get it if it's less than 2%. the main problem is that drills are very inefficient. a water drill will get a few units of water every minute, and that's a few kg. a nitrogen drill will get a few units of nitrogen every minute, but a few units of nitrogen are only a few grams. the atmosphere of laythe should have nitrogen, but laythe is deep inside jool's radiation belts, even with the best shielding my crew got 50% radiation damage for staying there a couple of days. forget a laythe base. anyway, while nitrogen is rare, you need very little of it to go on, so you can live on stockpiles. my aforementioned ship has been unable to resupply in nitrogen, but it still has almost half of what it started with. despite using it as ammonia to run the greenhouses, and despite losing some to stress. so, very hard to resupply, but lasts a long time. I suppose it's rather realistic, though; I cannot find any hard data on nitrogen availability, but nitrogen gas is very stable, it doesn't make many rocks. small planets with no atmospheres, those that are easier to resupply from, won't have it.

- carbon is the big offender . you can get carbon cheap from some atmospheres (duna and eve, basically). everywhere else, the only source of it is the molten  regolith electrolysis, and it produces only a smidgen, it's ridiculously energy intensive, and ridiculously slow. i am experimenting there, 150 gigantors and 5 large convert-o-trons can only produce a kilogram of carbon every few minutes. yes, carbon is rare in regolith, but carbonaceous minerals exhist across all the solar system; I think they should make a carbon resources that can be found and mined in a few biomes, just like water and nitrogen. that's the real bottleneck of any isru process. on the plus side, your greenhouses won't need much of it, and you can get it in excess with waste incineration. so you can run greenhouses with few problems. making fuel from it is very hard.

On 2/13/2021 at 1:31 PM, Gotmachine said:

You technically can do it, but radiation, stress and failures will quickly get in the way. ISRU is limited to "realistic" options, so apart from a few specific places, you won't escape resupply missions .
Kerbalism isn't very well balanced for the "space colonization" gameplay style and the experience is a bit frustrating IMO, but there are people enjoying it.

it is enjoyable exactly because it's not made for it. a mod that is made to let you colonize space, well, it will pave the way for you. there is no challenge there.

there are also many games where you launch spaceships just by clicking a button, but in ksp we go with the gritty technical details. and if we are good at solving all the problems, then we can fly a ship. well, same for kerbalism and space colonization. it's basically the super-hard difficulty level.

but yes, it is very enjoyable only if you are looking for a challenge. use some more friendly mod otherwise.

Edited February 21, 2021 by king of nowhere

[Ozzy.R]

Hi, I've been experiencing a bug related to Kerbalism and CryoTanks. I've made a issue post about it on GitHub but I'm posting about it here as well with the hopes that casting a wider net will help with solving the problem faster.

The bug:

Spoiler

Hi, I've been experiencing a bug related to cryogenic boil off. After some testing I'm pretty confident that it's a problem that apereas when Kerbalism is installed with CryoTanks .

The bug; when activating active cooling on a liquid hydrogen tank the cooling only works for about five seconds before it stops entirely. There is no message warning of the boil of.

Upon activation: https://imgur.com/yVFRi2F

After five seconds: https://imgur.com/wWXmSw9

 

Here are some logs I found in the game directory, I don't know which ones are useful so I included all the ones I could find in a quick search. Pleas let me know if non of these logs are useful:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GQBXZDnEAgvv3KM4hJUQdeh1N46rsWjv/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JYvCFM5mZRlktWuCxTPO8dB-REGQ5FeH/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12VjlKxcLRyEGxXUAttVH8_cJ95E143zo/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18KTFOt0h5ZOVFd17phL1JbesPiGOwRx2/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G9GhQZw6pU4gac7leVQcfbUVYNtUlyDn/view?usp=sharing

 

And here is my mods list when I was trying to pin down the bug. Again, I'm pretty sure it's a problem with Kerbalism because it only shows up when I have it installed:

000_ClickThroughBlocker

001_ToolbarControl

B9PartSwitch

Bluedog_DB

BoulderCo

CommunityCategoryKit

CommunityResourcePack

CryoEngines

CryoTanks

CTTP

DeployableEngines

DMagicScienceAnimate

DynamicBatteryStorage

EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements

FarFutureTechnologies

HeatControl

InterstellarFuelSwitch

KerbalAtomics

KerbalEngineer

Kerbalism

KerbalismConfig

Kopernicus

Kronometer

ModularFlightIntegrator

ModuleManagerWatchDog

NearFutureAeronautics

NearFutureConstruction

NearFutureElectrical

NearFutureExploration

NearFutureProps

NearFutureSolar

NearFutureSpacecraft

OPM

RealisticAtmospheres

RealisticRescale

SCANsat

scatterer

Sigma

SpaceDust

SpaceTuxLibrary

SystemHeat

SystemHeatConverters

SystemHeatFissionEngines

SystemHeatFissionReactors

SystemHeatHarvesters

Waterfall

GroundEffect

 

[Ozzy.R]

Update: I did some more testing and found that the boil off stopped when infinite electric charge is turned on, which suggests that the bug  is related to electricity. 

[Martin80]

Hi,

I've seen on youtube preview of a new Kerbalism contracts. Does anybody know when this could be released? I'd like to start new career in 1.11 and would not want to start over in a month or two if it would be released then.

[Beetlecat]

On 1/31/2021 at 9:02 AM, king of nowhere said:

small science nitpick:

upon reaching Pol, my geiger counter gave the science report:

that's impossible.

helium has 9 known isotopes. two (helium 3 and 4) are stable and not radioactive. the others are radioactive, but all have half-lives of less than one second, so they cannot accumulate. in fact, assuming jool produces them, they would decay well before even reaching the moon.

as for hydrogen, there is deuterium, which is stable, and tritium, which has a half life of 13 years. small amounts of tritium are indeed formed by cosmic rays, but they do not accumulate over thousands of years, because tritium lasts only a few decades. heavier hydrogen isotopes have half lives on the order of nanoseconds.

so, there are no radioactive hydrogen and helium isotopes that could be accumulated at pol.

 

I would suggest changing "radioactive" with "rare"; this way, it could refer to helium 3 and deuterium, which could both be produced by cosmic rays at jool magnetosphere

 

This maybe an entirely stock-game science report, though Kerbalism may add their own flavor text as well.

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

This maybe an entirely stock-game science report, though Kerbalism may add their own flavor text as well.

nope. stock game does not have geiger counter or radiation report

 

EDIT: it's not like it's important. it's a minor nitpick for science nerds.

then again, science nerds are, like, 90% of the target of this game, so perhaps it is not so inconsequential

Edited March 2, 2021 by king of nowhere

[Beetlecat]

You're totally right! TY

[Scotskerb]

In terms of radiation belts, is there any plan to implement compatibility with extrasolar planet mods? I've been told that the radiation belts of exoplanets face Kerbol, despite the fact that they're nowhere near Kerbol.

[chris-kerbal]

I have  a problem with overweight Kerbals in 1.11...

When having a mission to rescue a Kerbal from the surface of e.g. moon, the Kerbal has 10.000sth units of food, oxygen, water, etc. !? With all of that, it survives of course for a lot of time, however e.g. RCS won't be able to lift him off the surface. I need to cheat down gravity to have him move at least a bit. I suspect Kerbalism, as it is my only mod with life support/food.

Is there a way of debugging to see how this came to place?

[king of nowhere]

On 3/14/2021 at 9:15 AM, chris-kerbal said:

I have  a problem with overweight Kerbals in 1.11...

When having a mission to rescue a Kerbal from the surface of e.g. moon, the Kerbal has 10.000sth units of food, oxygen, water, etc. !? With all of that, it survives of course for a lot of time, however e.g. RCS won't be able to lift him off the surface. I need to cheat down gravity to have him move at least a bit. I suspect Kerbalism, as it is my only mod with life support/food.

Is there a way of debugging to see how this came to place?

on mun, the jetpack should still lift you. it's just that they made the ground a bit sticky in the 1.11 to prevent a few bugs with bouncing/sliding.

try jumping as well as activating the jetpack. you need to jump to leave the ground, but then you should fly regularly

[chris-kerbal]

1 minute ago, king of nowhere said:

on mun, the jetpack should still lift you. it's just that they made the ground a bit sticky in the 1.11 to prevent a few bugs with bouncing/sliding.

try jumping as well as activating the jetpack. you need to jump to leave the ground, but then you should fly regularly

Ok thx! Will try that next time.

[Minmus Taster]

Cool!

Edited March 18, 2021 by Minmus Taster

[DJTales]

Hey guys, I've seen this question asked before but it doesn't look like there is an answer to it. 

I just bought the HDD upgrade from Electronics but I don't see any increase in any of my probe cores. Is this normal? I really want to increase the HDD size on my Mariner and Ranger probes from Bluedog Design. 

[Darkherring]

8 hours ago, DJTales said:

Hey guys, I've seen this question asked before but it doesn't look like there is an answer to it. 

I just bought the HDD upgrade from Electronics but I don't see any increase in any of my probe cores. Is this normal? I really want to increase the HDD size on my Mariner and Ranger probes from Bluedog Design. 

I think BDB probes lack config. Try dropping this one into GameData. I got this config some time ago, but I'm not sure it works with latest version of BDB 

[EimajOzear]

Now that Cryogenic Engines features methalox engines, would it be possible to have a patch which modifies the Sabatier Process to produce LqdMethane instead of Liquid Fuel?

[DJTales]

14 hours ago, Darkherring said:

I think BDB probes lack config. Try dropping this one into GameData. I got this config some time ago, but I'm not sure it works with latest version of BDB 

Thanks a bunch I'll give it a try.

[DJTales]

14 hours ago, Darkherring said:

I think BDB probes lack config. Try dropping this one into GameData. I got this config some time ago, but I'm not sure it works with latest version of BDB 

I tried dropping it into my GameData but the probes all seem to still only have the 2MB limit. Tried going back and researching the upgrade again but still nothing.  Am I supposed to just drop it into the  \Kerbal Space Program\GameData or somewhere else specific?  I opened up the CFG and it looked like the probes in there are the ones I'm testing out.

Edit: Tried a new game, wasn't fixed.

Edited March 20, 2021 by DJTales
Tried something, didn't work so letting people know.

[Dimimon]

Will there be a patch for the interstellar extension?

[Messeno]

hi I'm using the mods RO / RP1 / RSS, and I get 2 errors related to the file: GameData / KerbalismConfig / Support / SXT.cfg, does anyone know how to solve?

[Koram94]

I' m not sure if it is a bug or not, I am new to kerbalism, but I have an issue. When in the VAB I can't put experiments in a probe core, the configure button doesn't show up. And if I take a pod, even if a "configure scrubber" button shows up, it does nothing.

Because of this I cant't even hope to reach any celestial body. 

Could anybody help me figure this out? I have done my research, but found nothing.  I'm playing on Ksp 1.8.1 with RSS, RO and the last kerbalism version.

[AVaughan]

@Koram94 Which configs do you have installed?  For RO you should have the ROKerbalism configs installed.  (Also note the latest version of Kerbalism version now depends on HarmonyKSP https://github.com/KSPModdingLibs/HarmonyKSP ).

[Koram94]

@AVaughan I have both ROKerbalism and Harmony. With some meddling with the install I managed to be able to configure experiments, but scrubbers or fuel Cell still are a no go. Adding to that, I have this issue only in career mode, in sandbox mode It works fine.

 

[AVaughan]

@Koram94 Are scrubbers and fuel cells actually researched and bought in R & D?

You might get a better/faster response in the kerbalism channel of the RO discord https://discord.gg/hbPcKDbUgm .

[Koram94]

@AVaughan Fuel cells are, for sure. Scrubber I'm not sure, but I did a test with a new game, using cheats to have a lot of science right away, and researching most of the three up to the elssc, but still I couldn't configure anything.

Adding to that, if I right click on fuel cell or an elssc in the VAB parts lost to check the part's info, it shows me all the possibile processes, but it says it's not reconfigurable, but that might mean I can't do that on flight, so I'm not sure if it's related.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Koram94