[1.12.x] Space Dust - Atmospheric and Exospheric Harvesting (9/10/2024)

[Yuubari_]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

I would try the very basics first, copy an existing config that is similar to what you want and change the planet names. 

This is what I changed it to (using antimatter as the example):

I used the normal cfg what comes with Space Dust, so I am not 100% sure how exactly it is supposed to be done ^^"

// Rhode
// =============
SPACEDUST_RESOURCE
{
  resourceName = Antimatter
  body = Rhode
  RESOURCEBAND
  {
    name = kerbRing
    title = #LOC_SpaceDust_Band_LowBelt

    // Discoverability Data
    // --------------
    alwaysDiscovered = true
    alwaysIdentified = false

    // Maximum and minimum abundances (variation is by game seed)
    // In t/m^3
       minAbundance = 4.1E-29
       maxAbundance = 1.2E-28


    // Scale abundances by air density
    useAirDensity = False
    // Distribution model to use, can be Uniform or Spherical
    distributionType = Spherical

    // These parameters are specific to the Spherical model
    // -------
    // Altitudes are in km from sea level
    // Maximum altitude for a distribution
    altUpperBound = 650000
    // minimum altitude for a distribution
    altLowerBound = 550000
    // peak of a distribution
    altPeak = 600000
    // maximum variation of these altitudes (variation is by game seed)
    altVariability = 10
    // Falloff for altitude, can be Linear or None
    altFalloffType = Linear
    altitudeSquish = 0.9
    // lats in degrees
    // Maximum latitude for a distribution
    latUpperBound = 40
    // Minimum latitude for a distribution
    latLowerBound = -40
    // peak of a distribution
    latPeak = 0
    // maximum variation of these latitudes (variation is by game seed)
    latVariability = 1
    // Falloff for latitude, can be Linear or None
    latFalloffType = Linear
  }

  RESOURCEBAND
  {
    name = kerbRingHigher
    title = #LOC_SpaceDust_Band_HighBelt

    // Discoverability Data
    // --------------
    alwaysDiscovered = false
    alwaysIdentified = false

    // Maximum and minimum abundances (variation is by game seed)
    // In t/m^3
    minAbundance = 8.1E-29
    maxAbundance = 2.4E-28

    // Scale abundances by air density
    useAirDensity = False
    // Distribution model to use, can be Uniform or Spherical
    distributionType = Spherical

    // These parameters are specific to the Spherical model
    // -------
    // Altitudes are in km from sea level
    // Maximum altitude for a distribution
    altUpperBound = 2100000
    // minimum altitude for a distribution
    altLowerBound = 1900000
    // peak of a distribution
    altPeak = 2000000
    // maximum variation of these altitudes (variation is by game seed)
    altVariability = 10
    // Falloff for altitude, can be Linear or None
    altFalloffType = Linear
    altitudeSquish = 1

    // lats in degrees
    // Maximum latitude for a distribution
    latUpperBound = 55
    // Minimum latitude for a distribution
    latLowerBound = -55
    // peak of a distribution
    latPeak = 0
    // maximum variation of these latitudes (variation is by game seed)
    latVariability = 1
    // Falloff for latitude, can be Linear or None
    latFalloffType = Linear
  }

}

(I am sorry if that is too big or something, not really have much experience with forums ><)

Edited May 6, 2021 by Yuubari_

[Nertea]

If I'm not mistaken for most cases the 'code' name of the home body (e.g Rhode) needs to be Kerbin in a new planetary system. @Gameslinx can likely confirm this, but to target 'Rhode' you will target Kerbin. Other planets will be their 'real' names though. 

[Yuubari_]

Thank you! 

I already send a message to Gameslinx about the code name of the home world because it didn't work initially with the stock config, with the planet name being Kerbin ^^

[that_dragon]

Hi @lBoBl, i saw you were working on compatibility with the GPP for Space Dust, did you manage to make the config changes in the end? 

if not do you have any advice on how to make the changes to my own configs, quite new to MM patches and KSP config files :D

thanks in advanced :)

 

[lBoBl]

On 5/27/2021 at 5:12 PM, that_dragon said:

Hi @lBoBl, i saw you were working on compatibility with the GPP for Space Dust, did you manage to make the config changes in the end? 

if not do you have any advice on how to make the changes to my own configs, quite new to MM patches and KSP config files

thanks in advanced

 

Hi, I unfortunately I never got it finished, mostly because I realized that Space Dust collectors didn't work in the background when the craft is unloaded and that was a bummer so I kind of lost my motivation to do it. I also went down a fascinating rabbit hole when I started wondering where to put the antimatter and how much of it. And I mean it truly is an interesting question, like, as most people do I used to think that in the real solar system you'd find the most antimatter near Jupiter, where the planet's super strong magnetic field would magically turn sunbeams into antimatter, but turns out, that is probably wrong. Specialists guess that you'd actually find more antimatter very close to Saturn, precisely because Saturn has a very weak magnetic field and that this would let more high energy solar particles interact with the exosphere and upper atmosphere, which is what causes antimatter to actually get formed. But turns out you can still find good quantities of antimatter near Jupiter, more specifically near Io, where ejected particles from that hellish volcanic moon are caught within Jupiter's Van Allen belts and all kinds of interesting things happen to them (interesting meaning probably lethal for humans if exposed). But keep in mind that some of that is speculation, enlightened guesses and scientific predictions, because of course we don't get many occasions to send orbiters with antimatter detectors near these gas giants.

So then I had to translate that in terms of GPP and keep it balanced and interesting for gameplay. So there are three gas giants... Otho is in my opinion the most boring one, because its moons although pretty are nothing to write home about. I initially thought I should put not that much antimatter there because it is also the easiest one to go to and usually the first one you visit. But on the other hand having antimatter there would perhaps give you a reason to go there at least a couple times, make it overall less boring. So I'm undecided. Gauss is supposed to have the strongest magnetic field, so that would probably mean less antimatter there... But wait... there's Catullus. A big old semi-gas giant with a super THICC atmosphere, and then presumably some sort of exosphere, that orbits Gauss presumably outside of its magnetosphere. Meaning lots of antimatter just above Catullus' atmosphere could be interesting? And then there's Nero, which is like the super pretty and badass one and it has lots of interesting moons, I guess players will want to spend lots of time there, and it's the furthest one, so in terms of gameplay it would certainly make sense to have usable quantities of antimatter there, but more or less than near Catullus I don't really know. So yeah antimatter is a bit of a rabbit hole. Other resources are a bit easier to deal with usually, if you're having doubts about what resources should be present where, you can always check the GPP configs for Community Resource Pack which are in your GPP folder, and if needed also check the stock solar system configs for Space Dust and Community Resource Pack just to see how both mods handle resource concentrations.

As to how to do it, it's as simple as creating new text files in your gamedata folder, changing their .txt extension to .cfg so that KSP takes them into account, and writing stuff in them. You can use this file as an example (it however needs some changes, the concentration values are not ideal). It's pretty self explanatory. I'd recommend that you make a new folder called GPPSpaceDust or anything you want inside your GameData folder, and put all of your new config files inside that folder.  Also you'll need to have this file which will prevent Space Dust from trying to load its configs for the stock planets and getting confused by their absence. Without that the mod will just refuse to work and basically shutdown. Remember to test everything you've written once in a while, just start the game and see if everything shows correctly. You can set the alwaysDiscovered and alwaysIdentified values to True just for testing purposes on every resource you add, this will let you check that they show up in game much more easily since you won't have to send a detector to the location, just open the Space Dust GUI in the app menu or toolbar. Once testing is done, revert it to false.

So yeah, that's basically it, if you decide to go through and do it then good luck and don't hesitate to ask if you need advice.

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by lBoBl

[that_dragon]

24 minutes ago, lBoBl said:

Hi, I unfortunately I never got it finished, mostly because I realized that Space Dust collectors didn't work in the background when the craft is unloaded and that was a bummer so I kind of lost my motivation to do it. I also went down a fascinating rabbit hole when I started wondering where to put the antimatter and how much of it. And I mean it truly is an interesting question, like, as most people do I used to think that in the real solar system you'd find the most antimatter near Jupiter, where the planet's super strong magnetic field would magically turn sunbeams into antimatter, but turns out, that is probably wrong. Specialists guess that you'd actually find more antimatter very close to Saturn, precisely because Saturn has a very weak magnetic field and that this would let more high energy solar particles interact with the exosphere and upper atmosphere, which is what causes antimatter to actually get formed. But turns out you can still find good quantities of antimatter near Jupiter, more specifically near Io, where ejected particles from that hellish volcanic moon are caught within Jupiter's Van Allen belts and all kinds of interesting things happen to them (interesting meaning probably lethal for humans if exposed). But keep in mind that some of that is speculation, enlightened guesses and scientific predictions, because of course we don't get many occasions to send orbiters with antimatter detectors near these gas giants.

So then I had to translate that in terms of GPP and keep it balanced and interesting for gameplay. So there are three gas giants... Otho is in my opinion the most boring one, because its moons although pretty are nothing to write home about. I initially thought I should put not that much antimatter there because it is also the easiest one to go to and usually the first one you visit. But on the other hand having antimatter there would perhaps give you a reason to go there at least a couple times, make it overall less boring. So I'm undecided. Gauss is supposed to have the strongest magnetic field, so that would probably mean less antimatter there... But wait... there's Catullus. A big old semi-gas giant with a super THICC atmosphere, and then presumably some sort of exosphere, that orbits Gauss presumably outside of its magnetosphere. Meaning lots of antimatter just above Catullus' atmosphere could be interesting? And then there's Nero, which is like the super pretty and badass one and it has lots of interesting moons, I guess players will want to spend lots of time there, and it's the furthest one, so in terms of gameplay it would certainly make sense to have usable quantities of antimatter there, but more or less than near Catullus I don't really know. So yeah antimatter is a bit of a rabbit hole. Other resources are a bit easier to deal with usually, if you're having doubts about what resources should be present where, you can always check the GPP configs for Community Resource Pack which are in your GPP folder, and if needed also check the stock solar system configs for Space Dust and Community Resource Pack just to see how both mods handle resource concentrations.

As to how to do it, it's as simple as creating new text files in your gamedata folder, changing their .txt extension to .cfg so that KSP takes them into account, and writing stuff in them. You can use this file as an example (it however needs some changes, the concentration values are not ideal). It's pretty self explanatory. I'd recommend that you make a new folder called GPPSpaceDust or anything you want inside your GameData folder, and put all of your new config files inside that folder.  Also you'll need to have this file which will prevent Space Dust from trying to load its configs for the stock planets and getting confused by their absence. Without that the mod will just refuse to work and basically shutdown. Remember to test everything you've written once in a while, just start the game and see if everything shows correctly. You can set the alwaysDiscovered and alwaysIdentified values to True just for testing purposes on every resource you add, this will let you check that they show up in game much more easily since you won't have to send a detector to the location, just open the Space Dust GUI in the app menu or toolbar. Once testing is done, revert it to false.

So yeah, that's basically it, if you decide to go through and do it then good luck and don't hesitate to ask if you need advice.

 

No problem

After posting the message I had another look at implementing my own configs and I did manage to create a very basic configuration that added the relevant recourses to each planet. The CPP entries and the GPP Wiki was very helpful in working out the distribution of the recourses.  

For Antimatter I did not do nearly as much research as you did and only based the distribution of Antimatter on the ratios of the GPP’s gas giants in relation to Jool, but after reading your post I think I will go back and change my configs to make them a bit more realistic as well as integrating some of the ideas you brought up about Catullus and Nero.

If anyone wants a copy of the configs I made I can post them on the forum or GitHub but they are in a bit of a rough state, mainly to do with the abundances of each of the resources as they are not 100% realistic (either too high or too low) but at least for my own game, they worked well enough.  

Thanks for your help with this, your previous posts made it a lot easier to work out how to get everything working in the first place.  

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, lBoBl said:

Hi, I unfortunately I never got it finished, mostly because I realized that Space Dust collectors didn't work in the background when the craft is unloaded and that was a bummer so I kind of lost my motivation to do it.

They definitely do for me, can you give me some kind of reproduction process?

[Rakete]

Some questions to guys who are used to space dust:

 

#1: Whats the difference between the two Scanners which can be mounted to a probe (Sniffer and Looker)? Both show nothing in Orbit (tested on Eve), but show the same information as I enter the atmosphere. Shouldn't the spectroscopic one detect gases without entering the the atmosphere?

#2: If there are tiny traces of gases above the atmosphere (given the configs are adapted to do some trace gases...) Are there tools to collect them? The sift-o-tron only works in atmospheres.

#3: As a dev-proposal @Nertea: Maybe some tool/display in the scanner which altitudes are associated with the ressources once you probed them? Otherwise it's not possible to get to know, that LF for example is only below 8km  at eve. (Apart from picking pencil and millimeterpaper as the probe sinks into the atmosphere and drawing a curve yourself based on the values over time (reminds me of some physics experiments at university)

Edited July 1, 2021 by Rakete

[Nertea]

4 hours ago, Rakete said:

#1: Whats the difference between the two Scanners which can be mounted to a probe (Sniffer and Looker)? Both show nothing in Orbit (tested on Eve), but show the same information as I enter the atmosphere. Shouldn't the spectroscopic one detect gases without entering the the atmosphere?

It does. It can Discover resources from 300 km away and Identify them from 100 km away.

4 hours ago, Rakete said:

#2: If there are tiny traces of gases above the atmosphere (given the configs are adapted to do some trace gases...) Are there tools to collect them? The sift-o-tron only works in atmospheres.

Not in this mod. The tools in this mod are oriented towards stock resources.

4 hours ago, Rakete said:

#3: As a dev-proposal @Nertea: Maybe some tool/display in the scanner which altitudes are associated with the ressources once you probed them? Otherwise it's not possible to get to know, that LF for example is only below 8km  at eve. (Apart from picking pencil and millimeterpaper as the probe sinks into the atmosphere and drawing a curve yourself based on the values over time (reminds me of some physics experiments at university)

There is a balance between telling you everything. The map UI will tell you visually where a band is, but you need the in-situ scanner to go down and localize it precisely.

[Rakete]

6 minutes ago, Nertea said:

It does. It can Discover resources from 300 km away and Identify them from 100 km away.

 Mhhh... It didn't... does it also need time like the telescope? I tested it in a 200km eve orbit and press start scan. But no concentration values were shown in orbit until i entered the atmophere at 90km. And it didn't discover the undiscovered ressources. If it takes time, maybe I was impacient. But if there is no timer, than it was a bug. 

Edited July 1, 2021 by Rakete

[jordanjay29]

I'm encountering antimatter tanks not maintaining containment at extreme timewarp. 1000X (2 before the max) works fine, but going above that will zero out the stored antimatter periodically.

I have a exo harvester in Kerbin orbit at the first band of antimatter. I scanned the log files for an explanation but didn't find anything, nor was there an on-screen message at the time the antimatter amount zeroed out.

EDIT: Just had it happen on 1000X warp as well now.

Edited July 13, 2021 by jordanjay29

[CookieBorg]

On 6/11/2021 at 1:34 PM, that_dragon said:

No problem

After posting the message I had another look at implementing my own configs and I did manage to create a very basic configuration that added the relevant recourses to each planet. The CPP entries and the GPP Wiki was very helpful in working out the distribution of the recourses.  

For Antimatter I did not do nearly as much research as you did and only based the distribution of Antimatter on the ratios of the GPP’s gas giants in relation to Jool, but after reading your post I think I will go back and change my configs to make them a bit more realistic as well as integrating some of the ideas you brought up about Catullus and Nero.

If anyone wants a copy of the configs I made I can post them on the forum or GitHub but they are in a bit of a rough state, mainly to do with the abundances of each of the resources as they are not 100% realistic (either too high or too low) but at least for my own game, they worked well enough.  

Thanks for your help with this, your previous posts made it a lot easier to work out how to get everything working in the first place.  

Do you still have the configs? I'd love to be able to run this mod in my GPP save game and I don't mind scientific inaccuracies.

[that_dragon]

7 hours ago, CookieBorg said:

Do you still have the configs? I'd love to be able to run this mod in my GPP save game and I don't mind scientific inaccuracies.

Here is a Dropbox link to the configs : https://www.dropbox.com/s/mpv0g1vvdyk29ii/GPP_spacedust.zip?dl=0
hope it it helpful. 

You might need to spend some time readjusting the resources as I think I missed a zero in some of the values so they are two high, they are  a bit rough but they should be good enough to play with. 

[CookieBorg]

7 hours ago, that_dragon said:

Here is a Dropbox link to the configs : https://www.dropbox.com/s/mpv0g1vvdyk29ii/GPP_spacedust.zip?dl=0
hope it it helpful. 

You might need to spend some time readjusting the resources as I think I missed a zero in some of the values so they are two high, they are  a bit rough but they should be good enough to play with. 

Thanks!

[SnailsAttack]

@Nertea I did some testing and it appears that the SpaceDust resource harvesters' collection rate isn't throttled by a ship's ability to supply electric charge. The harvesters are either on or they're off, and this is determined by whether or not the ship has any source of electric charge. Therefore even a single solar panel is sufficient to power them at full speed. This doesn't make for good gameplay.

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, SnailsAttack said:

This doesn't make for good gameplay

I'm sure you didn't intend it this way, but this is like someone posting a picture of a giant purple cube replacing a part and asking 'is this intentional?'

Of course it's bloody not intended! I'll sort out what's wrong.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Nertea

[SnailsAttack]

48 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Of course it's bloody not intended!

well i dont know! It's kerbal space program, i learn something new about bad game design every day!

hey while we're here, is there any way you can make the harvesters require, like, a minimum rate of electric charge in order to operate? I think it would make for interesting ship design restrictions. If not as a stock feature, then maybe as something that can be enabled in the SpaceDustHarvester module.

[Nertea]

Hmm, I don't understand what you mean by that. There's this bug you've reported (it is not a gameplay feature) that makes it so you can run a harvester with any charge source, yes. Once that is resolved, you will need a charge source of appropriate power.

[SnailsAttack]

31 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Hmm, I don't understand what you mean by that. There's this bug you've reported (it is not a gameplay feature) that makes it so you can run a harvester with any charge source, yes. Once that is resolved, you will need a charge source of appropriate power.

I mean like a minimum rate of electric charge that's not necessarily just above zero. Like it could be 5 EC/s or 10 or something.

[Nertea]

Isn't that the case though? The consumption rate on the harvesters is 45 Ec/s and 20 Ec/s. When the bug is resolved that'll be properly functioning. 

[SnailsAttack]

8 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Isn't that the case though? The consumption rate on the harvesters is 45 Ec/s and 20 Ec/s. When the bug is resolved that'll be properly functioning. 

nah because they can operate on even minimal rates of electric charge. say, 0.1 EC/s. it just throttles down their production rate accordingly.

[Nertea]

  Yes, that's what we've just been discussing being fixed as the result of the bug. 

[SnailsAttack]

Just now, Nertea said:

  Yes, that's what we've just been discussing being fixed as the result of the bug. 

no this is something else, like. uh. like if you could make it so the harvesters wouldn't operate if they don't receive a minimum rate of electric charge. not necessarily more than just 0 EC/s, but, say, some custom amount like 5 or 10 EC/s.

[Nertea]

... that's what they should do. You need to supply the power rated on the unit that is shown in the VAB info box or they won't harvest. 

If you don't think I'm understanding you correctly, wait until the bugfix update and then come back here. 

[SnailsAttack]

13 hours ago, Nertea said:

... that's what they should do. You need to supply the power rated on the unit that is shown in the VAB info box or they won't harvest. 

If you don't think I'm understanding you correctly, wait until the bugfix update and then come back here. 

oh. I just tried to pitch your own idea to you. Not sure how I managed that. huh

well, I look forward to the patch.