Thinking ahead towards standardization

[mcwaffles2003]

First off... I am not a modder, my current abilities toward coding are small and though I would like to learn I am far from competent enough to make and support mods for a community.

But I was wondering if there has been any discussion for standardization of things we know will be brought into the game. I'm guessing laying the groundwork could be important before hand to some extent even though starting implementation is impossible before the game is released.

Basically I'm referring to a problem like where we have some mods that support "LH2" and others that support "Liquid Hydrogen" and that sort of lack of standardization.

H₂0 vs water

Food vs snacks

Deuterium vs D vs ²H

(are super/sub scripts able to be put into the game? I don't remember seeing them)

etc...

[The Aziz]

Well, this is because one modder created a resource called liquid hydrogen, and the other created LH2, and other modders decided they want to support one or the other in their mods.

I could use solid bananas, and someone else could create liquid bananas, and even though they're still bananas, they're not compatible, and there isn't much the devs can do about it. They're giving us platform to work on, but I don't think they're gonna limit the types of resources we can use.

[mcwaffles2003]

Just now, The Aziz said:

Well, this is because one modder created a resource called liquid hydrogen, and the other created LH2, and other modders decided they want to support one or the other in their mods.

I could use solid bananas, and someone else could create liquid bananas, and even though they're still bananas, they're not compatible, and there isn't much the devs can do about it. They're giving us platform to work on, but I don't think they're gonna limit the types of resources we can use.

I get that, but I'm just saying, maybe before the game is made maybe those modders come together to standardize a system of units that will come into play. This way instead of having multiple incompatible systems arise a more uniform system with more cross mod compatibility can be created. 

These kinds of resources have real world values that are constant among them so there shouldn't be much disagreement in how they're implemented I imagine so long as the symbolism/titling/nomenclature is largely agreed upon. 

[Superfluous J]

So basically

?

[mcwaffles2003]

9 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

So basically

?

Yes but without the competing systems that do the same thing ultimately creating unnecessary conflicts between mods reducing compatibility

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Yes but without the competing systems that do the same thing ultimately creating unnecessary conflicts between mods reducing compatibility

I don't think that's possible. You are inevitably going to have someone who disagrees with the standard and makes their own. You will also eventually have people who agree with the competing standard.

[The Aziz]

I was just going to post that comic. Standards are a weird thing and there always will be someone that doesn't want to go with the standard (or thinks their is better).

Also, this is why some mods are compatible with their resources AND stock resources. Like eg. cryogenic engines work on LF+O without a problem.

Edited May 7, 2020 by The Aziz

[Incarnation of Chaos]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I was just going to post that comic. Standards are a weird thing and there always will be someone that doesn't want to go with the standard (or thinks their is better).

Also, this is why some mods are compatible with their resources AND stock resources. Like eg. cryogenic engines work on LF+O without a problem.

That's also because of the difference in volume; there's a large number of people that don't enjoy using bulky tankage for LOX and LH2 despite that's just how the chemistry works out.

[harrisjosh2711]

This is the entire reason i want the fuel included stock! Stock parts wouldnt technically need to even use them, so long as the resource is defined. Right now community resource pack is your best bet, but some modders create their own resource, which makes them non compatible.

Edited May 7, 2020 by harrisjosh2711

[jimmymcgoochie]

After sitting through various work meetings where different developers argued the superiority of their preferred code language- java, python, C++, delphi, groovy etc.- I have to conclude that there is no single way to do anything. A lot depends on what you're doing- liquid hydrogen and H₂(l) are the same thing, but you'd use one in a sentence and the other in a chemical equation. If you're making a mod that's intended to lightly augment the stock game with some cryo engines then liquid hydrogen matches the stock liquid fuel well, but if you're going for a realism mod then calling it H₂(l) makes more sense.

The problem gets worse when even the real versions have multiple names e.g. tritium or deuterium, which are hydrogen isotopes also called hydrogen-2 and hydrogen-3 but also have their own chemical symbols D and T plus their atomic symbols ²H and ³H as well. Burning pure liquid tritium in a rocket would work just as well as regular liquid hydrogen because chemically it's the same thing, but using hydrogen-1 in a fusion reaction is impossible because they're different at a nuclear physics level. And that's just the first element!

Of course, having the same resources but different displayed names would be a big step in the right direction, with something somewhere that knew liquid hydrogen and H₂(l) were the same thing but hydrogen, deuterium and tritium were different and showing the preferred names accordingly, would be a great way to split the difference.

Edited May 7, 2020 by jimmymcgoochie

[Incarnation of Chaos]

1 hour ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

After sitting through various work meetings where different developers argued the superiority of their preferred code language- java, python, C++, delphi, groovy etc.- I have to conclude that there is no single way to do anything. A lot depends on what you're doing- liquid hydrogen and H₂(l) are the same thing, but you'd use one in a sentence and the other in a chemical equation. If you're making a mod that's intended to lightly augment the stock game with some cryo engines then liquid hydrogen matches the stock liquid fuel well, but if you're going for a realism mod then calling it H₂(l) makes more sense.

The problem gets worse when even the real versions have multiple names e.g. tritium or deuterium, which are hydrogen isotopes also called hydrogen-2 and hydrogen-3 but also have their own chemical symbols D and T plus their atomic symbols ²H and ³H as well. Burning pure liquid tritium in a rocket would work just as well as regular liquid hydrogen because chemically it's the same thing, but using hydrogen-1 in a fusion reaction is impossible because they're different at a nuclear physics level. And that's just the first element!

Of course, having the same resources but different displayed names would be a big step in the right direction, with something somewhere that knew liquid hydrogen and H₂(l) were the same thing but hydrogen, deuterium and tritium were different and showing the preferred names accordingly, would be a great way to split the difference.

Deuterium and Tritium are easier to fuse, and they do do at lower temperatures. The sun fuses normal Hydrogen despite this.

So it's not impossible, just much harder for us humans.

[jimmymcgoochie]

5 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Deuterium and Tritium are easier to fuse, and they do do at lower temperatures. The sun fuses normal Hydrogen despite this.

So it's not impossible, just much harder for us humans.

I was referring to an artificial fusion reactor, not a natural (stellar) one.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, harrisjosh2711 said:

This is the entire reason i want the fuel included stock! Stock parts wouldnt technically need to even use them, so long as the resource is defined.

Then half the community would install Better Than Stock Resources.

Come on, you know it would happen.

[Klapaucius]

16 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I could use solid bananas, and someone else could create liquid bananas, and even though they're still bananas, they're not compatible, and there isn't much the devs can do about it. They're giving us platform to work on, but I don't think they're gonna limit the types of resources we can use.

Dried banana chips. Fuel of champions.

[mcwaffles2003]

22 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I don't think that's possible. You are inevitably going to have someone who disagrees with the standard and makes their own. You will also eventually have people who agree with the competing standard.

It may be optimism but I hope that in a community that talks among itself so much and is vastly smaller in scale than what many of the examples that comic is meant for that forming a universal standard might be possible. In the whole of science the metric system vastly dominates, even in the US. Sure there's fights between SI and cgs but they're essentially the same thing and use the same units as they're both metric. 

At the very least having a conversation about it can't hurt.

 

13 hours ago, harrisjosh2711 said:

This is the entire reason i want the fuel included stock! Stock parts wouldnt technically need to even use them, so long as the resource is defined. Right now community resource pack is your best bet, but some modders create their own resource, which makes them non compatible.

That doesn't avoid the problem though as stock will never include as many fuels as the mod community. So why not have the base game remain relatively simple and clean with a framework laid out and let the modding community coalesce around a standard?

 

12 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

After sitting through various work meetings where different developers argued the superiority of their preferred code language- java, python, C++, delphi, groovy etc.- I have to conclude that there is no single way to do anything. A lot depends on what you're doing- liquid hydrogen and H₂(l) are the same thing, but you'd use one in a sentence and the other in a chemical equation. If you're making a mod that's intended to lightly augment the stock game with some cryo engines then liquid hydrogen matches the stock liquid fuel well, but if you're going for a realism mod then calling it H₂(l) makes more sense.

The problem gets worse when even the real versions have multiple names e.g. tritium or deuterium, which are hydrogen isotopes also called hydrogen-2 and hydrogen-3 but also have their own chemical symbols D and T plus their atomic symbols ²H and ³H as well. Burning pure liquid tritium in a rocket would work just as well as regular liquid hydrogen because chemically it's the same thing, but using hydrogen-1 in a fusion reaction is impossible because they're different at a nuclear physics level. And that's just the first element!

Of course, having the same resources but different displayed names would be a big step in the right direction, with something somewhere that knew liquid hydrogen and H₂(l) were the same thing but hydrogen, deuterium and tritium were different and showing the preferred names accordingly, would be a great way to split the difference.

This right here is a large reason towards why I made this thread. IMO using chemical equations as nomenclature would be bad. Not many people would recognize " C₁₀H₁₄O₄" as RP-1 and the problem is even worse if superscripts/subscripts dont show in the game, meaning differentiating isotope numbers from element ratio numbers would be difficult. Extrapolating from this, using "Liquid Hydrogen" makes more sense than "L H2" or "H2(l)" and "Deuterium" makes more sense than "L 2H" or "2D (l)". It also ties in well with resources like "Food" or "Electric charge" and overall it communicates the same information in a more broadly understandable way, just not as compactly.

[SpaceFace545]

13 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

It may be optimism but I hope that in a community that talks among itself so much and is vastly smaller in scale than what many of the examples that comic is meant for that forming a universal standard might be possible. In the whole of science the metric system vastly dominates, even in the US. Sure there's fights between SI and cgs but they're essentially the same thing and use the same units as they're both metric. 

At the very least having a conversation about it can't hurt.

 

That doesn't avoid the problem though as stock will never include as many fuels as the mod community. So why not have the base game remain relatively simple and clean with a framework laid out and let the modding community coalesce around a standard?

 

This right here is a large reason towards why I made this thread. IMO using chemical equations as nomenclature would be bad. Not many people would recognize " C₁₀H₁₄O₄" as RP-1 and the problem is even worse if superscripts/subscripts dont show in the game, meaning differentiating isotope numbers from element ratio numbers would be difficult. Extrapolating from this, using "Liquid Hydrogen" makes more sense than "L H2" or "H2(l)" and "Deuterium" makes more sense than "L 2H" or "2D (l)". It also ties in well with resources like "Food" or "Electric charge" and overall it communicates the same information in a more broadly understandable way, just not as compactly.

Just let the modders do what they want, if they want to work together with a community recourse pack the can but that’s up to them not the devs.

[mcwaffles2003]

19 hours ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Just let the modders do what they want, if they want to work together with a community recourse pack the can but that’s up to them not the devs.

At what point did I suggest devs make any action in this?

Seriously, do you ever listen to the people you debate with? Every time you comment on something I write you seem to disagree with something I didn't even say.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

At what point did I suggest devs make any action in this?

Seriously, do you ever listen to the people you debate with? Every time you comment on something I write you seem to disagree with something I didn't even say.

Since modders can make whatever resources they want who else would standardize in this case? 

[mcwaffles2003]

7 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Since modders can make whatever resources they want who else would standardize in this case? 

The modders. As stated in the OP, I made this thread hoping there could be discussion about preference and hopefully see some discussion between the modders before the game is released. This is in hope there could become a form of consensus to avoid the issues brought about in incompatibilities between mods in KSP 1.

I think it'd be cool, seeing as we can see what mods are popular, that the experiences of KSP 1 could help to improve what comes of KSP 2.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

21 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

The modders. As stated in the OP, I made this thread hoping there could be discussion about preference and hopefully see some discussion between the modders before the game is released. This is in hope there could become a form of consensus to avoid the issues brought about in incompatibilities between mods in KSP 1.

I think it'd be cool, seeing as we can see what mods are popular, that the experiences of KSP 1 could help to improve what comes of KSP 2.

The issue with this is that we don't actually know what Resources will be needed in KSP2, and that means it's rather hard to predict ahead of time which will be needed.

See this thread.

Spoiler

 

Most of the same arguments here also apply to this; especially the 2nd post by Master39. We don't have any idea what Resources we'd need, if we'd need them or etc.

With all of that said; i'm going to say what i think Star Theory/Current Developers could do to make modders lives easier in terms of Resources. Because i think the idea of asking modders what they think we should standardize on before we even know what tools they would have, what Resources are lacking or what mods we're going to make is jumping the gun.

Spoiler

#1- A robust but Simple array of fuels, tanks and power options.

There's been quite a few discussions about if KSP should have anything beyond "Liquid Fuel" and "Oxidizer", and what their implications for gameplay would actually mean. This just might be my own personal bias because i use the Near Future Suite, but i think a case can be made for LH2, LCH4, and Chilled RP-1 as our fuels. Oxidizer would be LOX in all three, and a variety of lego and procedural tankage would be provided with a stock fuel switch system so you don't need 4 different tanks for every fuel. Compact Fission and even large fusion reactors would be introduced later for the more exotic ships, and would reduce RTG spam that is the stock option currently.

Why these specifically? Why not some of the more exotic things? Because they provide a pivot for balance that isn't too hard to get your mind around, and really only requires 3 additional fuel types (Chilled RP-1 could just remain "Liquid Fuel"). LOX and RP-1 are the densest, and the fuel to dry mass ratio is around the middle. These are stable, reliable fuels; the "Handyman" rocket in a way. LH2 and LOX trade raw power, density and volume for best-in-class vacuum performance and a much better fuel to dry mass ratio, but are difficult to keep cool, and require some special tankage to really get the best results (Again look at Nertea's stuff if you haven't already). LCH4 and LOX are between these two extremes, not as dense as LOX and RP-1, but with better vaccum performance and not too large of an increase in volume.

And these all directly feed into engine performance; RP-1 and LOX can create ludicriously powerful but relatively simple lifter engines. But with more dry mass, and less vaccum ISP. LH2 and LOX engines are lighter, but no where near as good at sea level, and thus making poor lifter engines. LCH4 and LOX again straddle a middle ground here.

#2- A ISRU system that makes more sense

Currently the 1.25m ISRU parts are some of the most curious things in the game, as they throw away the majority of Ore while making pitiful amoinsunts of fuel and never stabilizing thermally. This is on top of the drills only being usable in relatively rich deposits of Ore, and thus not suited for general purpose landers. While the 2.5M parts don't suffer from any of these issues, and are. So while the 1.25M parts shouldn't be just as good as the 2.5M ISRU kit, they need to at least be usable.

In addition it would be nice if the concentrations of components were weighted by biomes, but mostly abstracted away from the player. For instance; you should get an efficiency boost making LOX, CH4 and LH2 when drilling into Duna's caps since they're mostly CO2 and Water ices. With the rest of the fuels being produced at around the same rates, this means the player doesn't have to worry about the nitty-gritty of the chemistry involved unless they want to. And it can exploit intuition to make sense; cold things are better made in cold places etc. The API's exposed to modders would hook into these, and be exposed. So something like Rational Resources or the like could be made much easier, and have more control over the biomes and what occurs within them.

#3- Colonies, Starships, Vehicles, OH MY!

Colonies must do more than simply be massive facilities to provide resources, indeed they must become staging grounds for our assault on the stars around us. But this also presents a problem, and i think it's widely overlooked for the most part. Which is that the interaction with these facilities, their staff and the vehicles they use must be reliable and predictable. One of the main reasons in KSP i don't faff about with large rovers or vehicles in general is that they aren't reliable in the slightest; a rover that seems as if it could be driven all day long one night may decide to send itself into orbit with no reasonable explanation upon loading that save the next morning. And the same science that could be gotten with this rover can just as easily be done, and be done faster with a mining lander and biome hopping.

KSP2 does look like it's tackling this head-first; which is good. But it also means that i'd like to see more purpose-built kit for Rovers and Vehicles in general. A small selection of bodies, perhaps a couple drivetrains and a decent assortment of wheels and tracks would make these much easier to build. And then you could have experiments that could be done specifically on or with vehicles, like the robot arms in KSP1 currently. Or even have biomes inside caves or other structures that couldn't be reached with a lander due to their topology inside.

These would also be related to the Resource system; though more tangentially than anything else. Fuel Cells would have different efficiencies and produce different byproducts depending on what they were fed with, and ofc the same volume vs density sliders would apply.

 

 

[0111narwhalz]

I stand by my suggestion for a resource standard immediately out the gate, even if my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat. The key to avoiding the scenario outlined in that XKCD comic is to form the standard first, before competition has developed.

That being said, we should probably wait long enough to assess the need.

[DStaal]

2 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I stand by my suggestion for a resource standard immediately out the gate, even if my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat. The key to avoiding the scenario outlined in that XKCD comic is to form the standard first, before competition has developed.

Then the competition typically forms because you missed something, or have something really awkward...

[mcwaffles2003]

12 minutes ago, DStaal said:

Then the competition typically forms because you missed something, or have something really awkward...

Well its a good thing that we have the mods of KSP 1 to guide us. I don't think its over reaching that, at the least, we will see the majority of current mainstream mods (that aren't integrated into the base game) will make a comeback. If things get missed or must be revised then at least there will be a somewhat stable foundation upon which can be built. 

3 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I stand by my suggestion for a resource standard immediately out the gate, even if my enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat. The key to avoiding the scenario outlined in that XKCD comic is to form the standard first, before competition has developed.

That being said, we should probably wait long enough to assess the need.

This was my hope as well. It may not last but it can be used to give a good start.

21 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Most of the same arguments here also apply to this; especially the 2nd post by Master39. We don't have any idea what Resources we'd need, if we'd need them or etc.

With all of that said; i'm going to say what i think Star Theory/Current Developers could do to make modders lives easier in terms of Resources. Because i think the idea of asking modders what they think we should standardize on before we even know what tools they would have, what Resources are lacking or what mods we're going to make is jumping the gun.

I think a general list of needed resources could be made and any that are already in the game could simply be omitted from that list. Or even then a completely separate list which omits the stock resources entirely. Either one could world work. Implementation to code I assume right now isn't feasible but compiling a list of fuels and oxidizers, setting naming/nomenclature, defining necessary variables (density, thrust/unit mass, etc) could all be prepared and discussions/compromises could be made to set a path forward.

[0111narwhalz]

22 hours ago, DStaal said:

Then the competition typically forms because you missed something, or have something really awkward...

This is why instead of forming a resource standard, we form a resource standard interface. A system by which we agree on nomenclature and formatting, and by which we resolve potential conflicts. Presumably this would be some kind of git repo to which resource definitions could be submitted and automatically resolved.

Regarding the LH₂ v. LH2 v. LiquidHydrogen type conflicts: This is what the internal/display name distinction was made for. Keep a consistent internal name, probably the chemical one, while using a display name that suits your fancy.

[Bej Kerman]

Having liquid fuel, monoprop, electricity, etc. instead of a bunch of pointless resources makes the game much easier to pick up to beginners. Have we all been forgetting the fact that the game is supposed to be easier to pick up and not just RSS/RO and Interstellar Extended with clouds, or do hardcore players just want to make the game harder for the rest of us?