[WIP] Jade's Dev Thread

[JadeOfMaar]

I was building some engines over the weekend but they got attacked (I forgot to include some vital bits that needed unwrapping so some serious effort was wasted) so I diverted all power to shields!

All of that is in-game now. Aaaaand I'm heavily reconsidering the tile style because I do all the lines manually and that's a bother.

Part catalog highlighting is Photoshop, before anyone asks.

[Volt the protogen]

Quick question: yesterday i downloaded Thor Tech, Deep Sky core, SABR3 and Impulse Party, but a couple of parts seem to be missing (the scramjets, nav dish heat shield thingy and the heat shield parts in the post above).

Did i install something improperly, or have these parts not been added to any of these mods yet? (if so, when will they be released?)

[JadeOfMaar]

@Volt the protogenThose things belong to my mod Sterling Systems. You won't find them in any of my prior mods. Sterling Systems will come out... one of these days.

 

@Rakete @Ooglak Kerman The part is finally presentable. The GIN (Gargantuan Industry Nexus). 75m wide AIO refinery and factory.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Fuel Cells (Sterling Systems)

Specifically, Metal-Air Electrochemical Cells. Largest one is 5m. Their purpose is to burn metal-oxygen combinations with higher specific energies than most people will be aware of and they will stand as a very nice chemical power source for cases where nuclear and solar aren't viable (as long as you can secure a steady supply of the metal you choose to burn).

Where burning conventional fuels is concerned, I'm leaving that to:

• Stockalike Mining Extension which provides fuel cells in most of these sizes
• Rational Resources to add options to them

Panel style is still WIP. Finished.

Edited March 16 by JadeOfMaar
replaced Discord links, they expired

[JadeOfMaar]

Batteries
(With examples of height variants.) They're primarily colored white so they can visually fit with fuselages or stacks which are also largely white (and all of the white is available to Simple Repaint's color switcher).

Edited March 16 by JadeOfMaar
replaced Discord links, they expired

[chaos113]

17 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Batteries
(With examples of height variants.) They're primarily colored white so they can visually fit with fuselages or stacks which are also largely white (and all of the white is available to Simple Repaint's color switcher).

Nice 

[Ariel Kerman]

Hi Jade! I just respectfully want to ask if those big fusion engines will be released at some point, no pressure, honestly is quit amazing you still working on all this stuff for so many years! kudos to you 

[JadeOfMaar]

22 hours ago, Ariel Kerman said:

Hi Jade! I just respectfully want to ask if those big fusion engines will be released at some point, no pressure, honestly is quit amazing you still working on all this stuff for so many years! kudos to you 

Hey Ariel. They will be released sometime. However, I've planned to replace or revise several of the engines as I've gotten better and gotten better ideas/knowledge since starting.

[Kerbalwings]

I saw your Jet and Turboprop concepts, they look pretty neat.

[JadeOfMaar]

@Ariel Kerman The grind resumes at last. (My PC died.)

2.5m Epstein-alike ICF engine on the way.

[JadeOfMaar]

Looking proper, at last.

Father & son

Edited March 16 by JadeOfMaar
replaced Discord links, they expired

[Ariel Kerman]

Woow man, thats some nice modeling/texturing skills! Sorry to hear that about your PC 
But glad to see youre working on this bad boys engines again! 

[JadeOfMaar]

Thermal Nozzles

2.5m, 1.25m (and 0.625m clone not shown). Between these two I've tried to keep the throat diameter the same so the 2.5m engine has better nozzle ratio and offers less thrust for its size but more vac Isp.

Edited March 16 by JadeOfMaar
replaced Discord links, they expired

[JadeOfMaar]

Pebble Bed Reactors

Can't adequately power the thermal nozzles (or a small city) without these hulking things. (Some texture issues wait to be fixed)

Edited March 16 by JadeOfMaar
replaced Discord links, they expired

[JadeOfMaar]

Fuel cells, batteries and molten salt reactors in-game now. Most of these parts not shown.

[JadeOfMaar]

Re-textured the heatshield suite.

Next up is updating the textures for the wrapper Graphene radiators. They look like such garbage now in comparison to their same style becoming fully mature on the thermal nozzles. The molten salt reactors need just a bit of a touchup too.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

I'm preparing another handful of engines (by type) to share:

• Gas Core AntiMatter (reuses the existing GCNTR models and functionally swaps out the Uranium with Tungsten. Performance appears to be quite unchanged.)
• Lithium SaltWater (making a comeback with a complete redo and available in 1.25m, 1.875m, 2.5m, 3.75m.)
  • Will have to be held back as there are no tanks for this (yet).
• Plasma Core AntiMatter (kindred to the convenional Mag Confinement Fusion engine but needs its own model.)
• SULEU (the NERV-alike but with much better performance. This was supposed to be released already but badly needed a nozzle fix and re-texture. Available in 0.938/1.25m and 1.875m.)

[AtomicTech]

6 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I'm preparing another handful of engines (by type) to share:

• Gas Core AntiMatter (reuses the existing GCNTR models and functionally swaps out the Uranium with Tungsten. Performance appears to be quite unchanged.)
• Lithium SaltWater (making a comeback with a complete redo and available in 1.25m, 1.875m, 2.5m, 3.75m.)
  • Will have to be held back as there are no tanks for this (yet).
• Plasma Core AntiMatter (kindred to the convenional Mag Confinement Fusion engine but needs its own model.)
• SULEU (the NERV-alike but with much better performance. This was supposed to be released already but badly needed a nozzle fix and re-texture. Available in 0.938/1.25m and 1.875m.)

Hints/previews can be found on the KSP Modding Society which is linked in my signature

[WarriorSabe]

23 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I'm preparing another handful of engines (by type) to share:

• Gas Core AntiMatter (reuses the existing GCNTR models and functionally swaps out the Uranium with Tungsten. Performance appears to be quite unchanged.)
• Lithium SaltWater (making a comeback with a complete redo and available in 1.25m, 1.875m, 2.5m, 3.75m.)
  • Will have to be held back as there are no tanks for this (yet).
• Plasma Core AntiMatter (kindred to the convenional Mag Confinement Fusion engine but needs its own model.)
• SULEU (the NERV-alike but with much better performance. This was supposed to be released already but badly needed a nozzle fix and re-texture. Available in 0.938/1.25m and 1.875m.)

Gas core antimatter? That feels a bit like a waste of antimatter to me, seeing as such engines are limited by their material properties and so nuclear can match it in performance with just regular old uranium. At least it's not SCAM, though

[JadeOfMaar]

On 10/6/2023 at 2:28 AM, WarriorSabe said:

That feels a bit like a waste of antimatter to me,

Honestly, yeah it is. It's really just padding for antimatter tech offerings. But indeed, at least it's not SCAM. I might drop these then.

[WarriorSabe]

9 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Honestly, yeah it is. It's really just padding for antimatter tech offerings. But indeed, at least it's not SCAM. I might drop these then.

Plasma core at least still feels like a decent use for it, and there is also the ultimate antimatter option of laser core too that I've only seen in KSPIE before. There's also things like antimatter catalyzed fission sails, and (relatively) dead simple positron ablative engines. There's a pretty good variety of uses for antimatter out there, really

[JadeOfMaar]

19 hours ago, WarriorSabe said:

Plasma core at least still feels like a decent use for it, and there is also the ultimate antimatter option of laser core too that I've only seen in KSPIE before. There's also things like antimatter catalyzed fission sails, and (relatively) dead simple positron ablative engines. There's a pretty good variety of uses for antimatter out there, really

Ooooh. I have no interest in LCAM but I want to do sails so this is actually quite likely to happen now. Thanks for introducing me to it!

[WarriorSabe]

14 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I have no interest in LCAM

Well, LCAM is still the peak of antimatter drive tech, and a component of the most powerful propulsion technology possible beyond antimatter, the sphaleronic ramlaser (which is an amazingly epic drive, but also one that's both pretty overpowered for ksp and probably only possible to build in sizes well beyond what really works for ksp); but I understand why you'd want to skip it on its own, it is pretty low thrust.

Though, not necessarily *as* low as you might think - because the thing is, it's so efficient it ends up having less waste heat again, as practically all the energy of the drive becomes a collimated laser beam, so you only have the waste heat of the ambiplasma confinement magnets, relativistic ambicurrent generation linacs, and anything absorbed from nondegenerate sidereactions (which is a lot of sources, but all relatively small compared to the main drive output if it's built properly), so when you look at the ratio of thrust to heat generation (the thrust stat that matters for high-energy drives, as radiator mass tends to easily outstrip drive mass) it's actually not any worse than BCAM, and has at least the potential to be better (it has a theoretical optimum of 100% efficiency, meaning a perfect one needs no radiators at all allowing you to cram hilarious amounts of power into it)

Of course, BCAM is still a pretty low target compared to thermal rockets and the like, but like many other propulsion techs you can make the LCAM into a sort of one by injecting neutral hydrogen into the gamma ray laser output, and still see an improvement over BCAM since the reaction is performed more efficiently. The massively energetic gamma rays might even be able to heat it to protium fusion temperatures with enough magnozzle confinement (could easily do more traditional fusion fuels) for more afterburning (which'd also have the side effect of increasing molecular weight, further helping the Isp to thrust trade). Just some food for thought on ways to adapt LCAM into the core of a more punchy drive

 

14 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I want to do sails so this is actually quite likely to happen now

Well, here's the Atomic Rockets page on it: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#id--Nuclear_Thermal--Fission_Fragment_Type--Antimatter-Driven_Sail

[JadeOfMaar]

I'm diverting all power to shields (again?)

The Sun shields (smallest shown: 10m) come with variants, each with their own purpose.

The Moon Shadow shields (cone shape only) are purely cosmetic (afaik) and for folks who want a stylish answer to their engine radiation. The larger sizes are only wider, not taller.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Sterling ISRU

I've started on parts for this sector. Everything here is intended for high volume operations (especially at landed settlements) so they will be powerful...and there will be no smaller sizes. There are enough mods for small stuff.

They have two explicit similarities to some MKS families of ISRU parts:

1. The parts will largely reuse this form and have a uniquely identifying decal per purpose. Well...the body texture will vary in some cases, and the decals use 3 or 4-letter acronyms, not numbers.
2. Some of these parts feature visible module bay doors and intend to depend on a mod's feature for actual module bays and in-flight swapping of resource recipes. Kerbalism in particular (and Wild Blue Tools for its OmniConverter system) will be catered for.

Harvesters of all types (and then some) will be provided in this suite, also.

"CPU" here means "Chemical Processor Unit." This decal is a quick placeholder and will be changed. :p

Edited October 27, 2023 by JadeOfMaar