[1.12.x] SystemHeat - a replacement for the CoreHeat system (November 20)

[UltraJohn]

12 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Nope. That config would not solve this problem. It should, if anything, make things worse for you as it is disabled and has very clear notes or warnings in comments at the top of it. It's WIP and unfinished, and waits for someone who uses System Heat (which excludes me) to complete it. You'll have to open GameData/OPT_Reconfig/Resources/OPT_DarkDrive_FFT.cfg and delete lines 29 to 376 as highlighted here.

 

I deleted those lines as instructed, and it has fixed most of the errors. I'm not quite understanding what this reconfig file does and why it has to be removed though. From the naming of the file (FFT) it would seem like it's made to work with Far Future Technologies, which has SystemHeat as a dependency. Does the engine still work even after removing those lines of code?

 

Besides that, I am still getting a few more errors, which I don't think has anything to do with SystemHeat, but I'm not sure. I'm hoping you can help me with this too.

 

Log file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e2z2n3zdo5th7xg/KSP.log?dl=0

 

Edit: Well it would seem I had a bunch of old patches and files in the OPT install, due to having downloaded some user configs in the comments a couple years ago. I suppose those were not really usable anymore. I reinstalled all of OPT to clean out those files, and the game now launches with no error!

Edited April 9, 2021 by John007qwe
Fixed issue

[kuakster]

how do i install the mod properly because it doesnt show the modded items and it said on the top right of my screen "cannot clone model ( part name ) as model does not exist" i need your help so i can play your mods please help me

[cinemagic]

Hi.

the harvester patch only apply to planetary harvest, when harvest a comet or asteroid the stock drill doesn't put out heat so the temperature stay low then you got very low thermal efficiency.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

7 hours ago, kuakster said:

how do i install the mod properly because it doesnt show the modded items and it said on the top right of my screen "cannot clone model ( part name ) as model does not exist" i need your help so i can play your mods please help me

Hi, welcome to the forum! 

When you download the mod you get a .zip file.

You need to unzip it by selecting it and clicking “extract all”

Once it is unzipped, look in the SystemHeat folder. There should be a Gamedata folder. 

Move that into your Kerbal Space Program folder. It might ask you to overwrite files, allow it to do that. 

After that, you should be almost ready. Go back to the system heat folder, and there should be a folder inside called Extras.
In there, you will see several folders.  Pick the part classes that you want to use SystemHeat for. Move those directly into gamedata. 
 

[cinemagic]

I think NTRs are bugged in 0.4.0.

My Liberator NTR can burn normally, but will instantly meltdown when I turn off throttle. The heat output will suddenly jump from 1800kw to over 2.5mw right after the throttle is off.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

53 minutes ago, cinemagic said:

I think NTRs are bugged in 0.4.0.

My Liberator NTR can burn normally, but will instantly meltdown when I turn off throttle. The heat output will suddenly jump from 1800kw to over 2.5mw right after the throttle is off.

That is because of exhaust cooling stopping after you turn off the throttle. Try manually turning off the reactor

[Nertea]

Just don't use reactors right now please, I know about problems but I have a life that takes priority over modding. I'll get to it when I can.

[Grimmas]

@Nertea FYI there's a small UI glitch where the system heat menus slide off the screen when you have a lot of buttons on the menu bar and scroll through them - see screenshot, lower right corner.

[cinemagic]

10 hours ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

That is because of exhaust cooling stopping after you turn off the throttle. Try manually turning off the reactor

Do you mean I should shutdown engine and reactor instead of throttle down when a burn is finished?

[Ozzy.R]

On 4/10/2021 at 10:36 PM, cinemagic said:

Do you mean I should shutdown engine and reactor instead of throttle down when a burn is finished?

I just tried that, it doesn't work. Your engine will still be damaged from the excessive heat it's reactor is generating. What you can do instead is slowly bring down the throttle once your really close to the end of what ever burn you're doing. This will bring your engine's reactor power down to manageable levels while still benefitting from the exhaust  cooling.

I haven't used the Liberator NTR myself so you will have to do some experimenting to figure out exactly how fast you can lower the throttle without damaging the engine. However, I think you should start by lowering the throttle by one third every 5 seconds, and increase the time duration if that's not enough.

I hope that helps.

[DichromaticLotus]

On 4/4/2021 at 2:32 PM, Nertea said:

I spent about two hours tonight going over all these files and trying various ways of reproducing things by building weird and strange systems. Found nothing - no idea what could be wrong. Will keep thinking about it but on that vessel all the internals look just fine and there's nothing amiss. 

This only occurs on vessels from a previous version loaded in this version?

Sorry for the late reply a family member was suddenly sick and I had to go out of town. I have since abandoned that save file and made a new one with less mods. It fixed the **Not Found** loop problem but I'm still unable to modify heat loops even when everything is shut down. If heat loops 0-3 is used and I want to move a coolant tank from loop 0 to loop 2, it will skip loop 1-3 entirely and jump to unused loop 4. From loop 4 it can't decrease loop number and I have to go to all the way to loop 9 as it loops around to loop 0.

logs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQnYI9V17Td4p_nFeIJ3tnAaJnwiHdRY/view?usp=sharing

[Nertea]

6 hours ago, DichromaticLotus said:

Sorry for the late reply a family member was suddenly sick and I had to go out of town. I have since abandoned that save file and made a new one with less mods. It fixed the **Not Found** loop problem but I'm still unable to modify heat loops even when everything is shut down. If heat loops 0-3 is used and I want to move a coolant tank from loop 0 to loop 2, it will skip loop 1-3 entirely and jump to unused loop 4. From loop 4 it can't decrease loop number and I have to go to all the way to loop 9 as it loops around to loop 0.

logs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQnYI9V17Td4p_nFeIJ3tnAaJnwiHdRY/view?usp=sharing

That's intentional. You can't change assignments outside of the editor, only the number. If you try to change loop numbers to something that is 'occupied' it picks the next unoccupied number

If you can't decrement the loop number, that may be something I should look into, at the moment if the slot is 'used', it only looks forward for available numbers. 

[DichromaticLotus]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

That's intentional. You can't change assignments outside of the editor, only the number. If you try to change loop numbers to something that is 'occupied' it picks the next unoccupied number

If you can't decrement the loop number, that may be something I should look into, at the moment if the slot is 'used', it only looks forward for available numbers. 

I see, thanks for the explanation!

[Geryz]

I'm having some problems with the mod, Radiators just don't work. They simply don't do anything. I have a reactor from NFE (yes, I got the NFE config), attach radiators, 0kw system flux, 0kw heat rejection. Heat exchangers, coolants, nothing works. Try starting the thing, everything overheats. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug?
Also B9 Part Switch is telling me on KSP startup that it's having problems with some radiator parts, see image 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

4 hours ago, Geryz said:

I'm having some problems with the mod, Radiators just don't work. They simply don't do anything. I have a reactor from NFE (yes, I got the NFE config), attach radiators, 0kw system flux, 0kw heat rejection. Heat exchangers, coolants, nothing works. Try starting the thing, everything overheats. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug?
Also B9 Part Switch is telling me on KSP startup that it's having problems with some radiator parts, see image 

Do you have heat control installed?

[Geryz]

Yup I do
I also have Kerbalism + KerbalismSystemHeat (a mod to make SystemHeat compatible with Kerbalism)
Not sure if that's relevant 

Edited April 14, 2021 by Geryz

[Grimmas]

Kerbalism does its own thing so all bets are off there, you'll be better off looking for support from the maker of KerbalismSystemHeat.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

51 minutes ago, Geryz said:

I also have Kerbalism + KerbalismSystemHeat (a mod to make SystemHeat compatible with Kerbalism)
Not sure if that's relevant 

Very relevant. Are you sure that KSH is even compatible with the latest version?

[Geryz]

 

13 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Very relevant. Are you sure that KSH is even compatible with the latest version?

Weirdly enough the creator doesnt state which versions it's compatible with but I got the newest release which was 14 days ago and the newest version of KSP so that should be fine? Not sure though
I'm gonna try without KSH and see if that's the cause of the problem
Edit: It is. Guess I'll try to get support from the maker of KSH then or try to play without it for now

Edited April 14, 2021 by Geryz

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, Geryz said:

 

Weirdly enough the creator doesnt state which versions it's compatible with but I got the newest release which was 14 days ago and the newest version of KSP so that should be fine? Not sure though
I'm gonna try without KSH and see if that's the cause of the problem
Edit: It is. Guess I'll try to get support from the maker of KSH then or try to play without it for now

Can you point me to this? A quick search turned up nothing and I want to make sure I'm aware of any users so I don't cause breaking changes

 

[Grimmas]

Should be this one.

[AtomicRocketBooster]

On 4/8/2021 at 5:19 PM, Nertea said:

It's obviously taking some work to dial in the correct level of automation here.  Currently (assuming the bug gets fixed):

• Engine reactors run at power levels of (usually) 5-100%, with power uprates of 10%/s and down rates of 20%/s
• Turning reactors on (when no engine is on) will increase their throttle to minimum (5% ). This is 100 kW for the LV-N. They will melt down eventually at this level without radiators or propellant flow.
• If the reactor can generate power, the minimum provides you with maximum power generation. I think the minimum is offhand 2% for these reactors.
• When you increase engine throttle, the reactor will throttle up automatically to match the engine throttle, at 10%/s so will take ~10s to get to full power
• When you decrease engine throttle, the reactor will throttle down automatically to match the engine throttle, down to the minimum value at 20%/s so will take ~5s to get to minimum power. 
• You need to do something in that 5s or the reactor will melt down. Currently, the lower power reactors should survive a hard cooldown (e.g, the temperature increase in 5s of zero cooling will be below the meltdown threshold) without doing anything special. Higher power reactors will need a slower cooldown, using extra radiators or by slowly decreasing the engine throttle. 
• Highest power reactors (gas core stuff) will need radiators to run at all.

What is missing here?

Just following up here - that all sounds eminently reasonable. However, (likely due to bugs you've already identified) I'm not sure the reactor throttle automation is actually working that way. 

 

On 4/9/2021 at 2:24 AM, Wyzard said:

FWIW, the mechanics you described sound pretty reasonable to me.  Seems like there are issues with unclear UI, but I don't see anything "missing" mechanics-wise.  (And the "unclear UI" thing is halfway just that the documentation is unfinished.)

Regarding the UX, the exhaust cooling makes it all a lot more complicated.  I think the key things you'd need visible to completely model things in the VAB are:

• Engine Throttle (to model engine exhaust cooling) (I wasn't able to find this - do you have to go into each individual engine?)
• Reactor Throttle (again, is this something we'd have to go into each individual part for?)
• Altitude/velocity (for convection) (You have this already)

The interplay between the automation and the throttle is something that can get tricky and hard to make intuitive for end users.  Maybe a toggle in the UI between (All nuclear engines and reactors on full throttle) and (All engines at 0 throttle and reactors at peak EC output e.g. 2%)?

Just some ideas - feel free to take them or leave them!

Edited April 14, 2021 by AtomicRocketBooster

[Grimmas]

Adding a coolant tank helps a bit, in the sense that the Nerv no longer automatically melts when shut off.  Also, I originally went with 40 kW radiators because that's what the System Heat UI in VAB told me is enough to balance the loop. Based on testing and the above posts you clearly need at least 100 kW rejection if you don't want it to melt down while idle, but this is not communicated in the UI. Also it's a bit strange how radiators reject zero heat until the max temperature of the reactor is reached. 

[Nertea]

SystemHeat 0.4.1

• Fixed DebugSimulation being on by default
• Fixed an issue where heat loops that had no producers could run into a divide by zero error, causing overheats
• Heat loops will now cool down at a rate proportional to the difference between current and nominal temp if all systems on the loop are off
• Fixed a number of unapplied localization fields on fission reactors and engines
• Fixed some fields in modules being saved to persistence when they didn't need to be
• Changed fission engine exhaust cooling to be modeled against propellant flow instead of engine throttle
• Fission reactor cores now have a temperature lag in core temperature vs coolant temperature
• Completely eliminated cooling requirement from Nerv, Cherenkov
• Added an Exhaust cooling field that shows current exhaust cooling
• Renamed Reactor Output field to Waste Heat to clarify that it's the heat you should worry about

Sorry this has taken a while, been very unmotivated with KSP recently. Tried to work really hard on the NTR stuff, hope I didn't introduce new bugs otherwise

[Grimmas]

14 minutes ago, Nertea said:

SystemHeat 0.4.1

• Completely eliminated cooling requirement from Nerv, Cherenkov

That's too bad, I actually liked the fact that going interplanetary with Nerv was no longer the stock easy mode