[1.9.1-1.10.1] Kiwi Tech Tree Overhaul 1.3.0 (17 December 2020)

[hemeac]

@antilochus, Really glad you are enjoying it!  Feeling a bit overwhelmed on RSS scaling was one of the reasons that this tree exists.

I had not intended to nerf the Swivel's sea level ISP, just it's vacuum slightly, but looks like I copied that value over from the Terrier.  Should be able to put out a hotfix soon to fix that and may do a quick 1.11 compatibility pass for the 1.3 branch as well.  If you want to fix that, you can go to KiwiTechTree/Configurations/Core/Main.cfg and change the value on line 1325.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

Just now, hemeac said:

I have found over the years that anything that I've marked as final is generally subject to change....  I've gone through and had a rethink about the engines and this is my current thinking:

Two primary branches for engines: Pressure-Fed (ie. Propulsion Systems) and Pump-Fed (Rocketry).  Within the primary node of each branch you will have engines that unlock within that tier.  They will have their stats slightly nerfed as they are "prototypes".  There will be two sub-nodes for fuel types: Liquid  Fuel (Kerolox and Hypergolic/MonoProp) and Cryogenic (Hydrolox and Methalox).  Each of these subnodes will cost less to unlock than the primary node.  Within those subnodes, you will be able to upgrade to the full version of the engine generally based on the original config from Squad/Mod Author.  Upgraded variants will be still be available a couple of tiers later within the appropriate fuel-type subnode.  I think this will make the unlock system conceptually easier for engines  which have multiple fuel-types.  

If anyone has feedback about the "prototype" concept, let me know.

 

This is a perfect compromise! I especially like the concept of prototyping.

I've started a quick career in my modded game and I would like to reaffirm the necessity of GAP for any Kiwi Tech Tree playthrough. I went bankrupt in the second month, before I had even launched a craft (Bureaucracy and the KCT VerySlower preset are vicious.)

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, hemeac said:

I had not intended to nerf the Swivel's sea level ISP, just it's vacuum slightly, but looks like I copied that value over from the Terrier.

Oops that bit me just recently. I figured it was a ding on early gimbal engines or something. I just took it in stride

I don't have strong feelings about prototyping. It sounds cool but I like the way it is now, too. Whatever you do decide I'm pretty sure I'll like it!

[hemeac]

@Clamp-o-Tron, also really appreciate the original feedback on the engine tech, that led to a couple of deep dives on looking over various tech that I have generally glossed over.  I had been starting to play around with a custom KCT setting and trying to take some inspiration from RP-1's settings.  Will bundle it if I think it can improve on the VerySlower preset, otherwise that should go into a recommended settings section.

@Superfluous J, sorry about the Swivel as well, think I will try and keep my tweaks to performance relatively "minor".  Feel free to comment if something looks a bit out of whack. 

I think in practice the change to the engine branches shouldn't change too much if you have mostly a vanilla set of parts and few gameplay mods.  But it will help me categorize parts for mods that use multi-fuel setup for their parts.  It also creates an opportunity for me to add intuitive patches that impact per-part reliability of engines if paired with Kerbalism, Engine Ignitor or Pay to Play.  Will try and balance the prototype "nerf" to not be a huge deterrent if you don't use those style of mods.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, hemeac said:

sorry about the Swivel as well, think I will try and keep my tweaks to performance relatively "minor".  Feel free to comment if something looks a bit out of whack. 

No problem, i kind of enjoyed the surprise to be honest. And it made building early rockets a bit harder as the Swivel is the best early launch stage gimballing engine. Taking that away got me to find ways to spare 4 parts for fins. Well, elevons to use AS fins.

[hemeac]

Here is updated tech tree complete with the branch for the engines and all icons.  There may be some more "parent" connections between branches, but those will come as I am doing some playthroughs.

Some miscellaneous stats:
Tech Nodes
Squad: 65
Community Tech Tree: Adds 76
Kiwi Tech Tree: Adds 148

To try and keep things from just being a grind, I did need to readjust the base points at each tier.  Here is the comparison of the current base cost, but these will still be subject to change.

The long-run unlock costs for the Kiwi Tech Tree ends up being about 11% higher than the base Community Tech Tree so this is what you should expect if you are playing with a near stock set of parts.  However, I will be defaulting to an "adaptive" difficulty based on the number of science-heavy mods, so these include DMagic, BDB, Coatl Aerospace, TantaresSP, Interkosmos, LTech and KrakenScience.  The list of science mods could increase as I add support for additional mods, but those will be the ones that are part of the first 2.0 release.

[Hypercore]

Really enjoys this tech tree mod! All the little features really come into play early game, as my other favorite tech tree mod, engineering tech tree, doesn't have a telemetry report. I would love Real Fuels integration though, then it will probably become my essential mod!

[Superfluous J]

FYI I use this mod with pretty much all stock parts, and the currently-on-ckan "Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes" mod breaks the tree so some branches are inaccessible.

There is a beta though of that mod linked in this post that fixes the problem.

[hemeac]

That's great to know, thanks!

[evileye.x]

@hemeac, I have noticed "Explore Custom Contracts (possibly JNSQ scale?)" in the poll.

May I suggest not to develop contracts from ground up, but rather adopt 

 

For what I've tried, IMHO it is the best career progression pack.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

36 minutes ago, evileye.x said:

@hemeac, I have noticed "Explore Custom Contracts (possibly JNSQ scale?)" in the poll.

May I suggest not to develop contracts from ground up, but rather adopt 

 

For what I've tried, IMHO it is the best career progression pack.

That seems like a good option. I’m kind of taking the lead on contracts, but haven’t done very much yet. I suppose taking that over would be an option, if @pap1723would be OK with that.

All the stuff included looks great to keep, but @hemeacand I have thought about a few types not included:

Spoiler

Sounding rockets altitude

 Sounding rockets downrange

GAP-alike contracts but with none of the rescues or airlines

Rocketplanes supersonic

Rocketplanes altitude

Kerbalism science collecting

Small (<500kg) payloads into low orbits*

Repeating launches into similar orbits with the same payload (equatorial, polar, geosynchronous, tundra)*
 

* Would probably mean a packaged subassembly to launch

Merry Christmas btw!

[evileye.x]

@Clamp-o-Tron

I've made a list of complimentary contract packs for myself - what I think should provide most complete JNSQ career experience.

Career Evolution	https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/162205-122-13-career-evolution-contract-pack/#comments
GAP for JNSQ	https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/198338-181-110x-contract-pack-gap-for-jnsq-missionpack-with-milestones-airline-and-rescue-missions/
CommNet Relays	https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/116789-13-14-15-16-17-18-contract-pack-commnet-relays-210-2019-jan-13/
Tourism Plus	https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/102372-14x-contract-pack-tourism-plus-v152-2016-12-14/
Field Research	https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/111573-1101-contract-pack-field-research-v122-2020-09-20/
Anomaly Surveyor	https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/98666-14x-contract-pack-anomaly-surveyor-v171-2018-03-30/

I've not added all of them yet in my game, but seems those should cover all aspects of space program without much crossing over.

Also, If we're talking about enhancing KSP career experience:

For me, major game changer for career playthrough was Bureaucracy. It makes  career so much more enjoyable and possible to play without a single launch revert or any "simulations".  

I use all those mods overhaul whole career mode:

gameplay - career	Bureaucracy
gameplay - career	CrewRandR
gameplay - career	Earn Your Stripes
gameplay - career	Kerbal Construction Time
gameplay - career	KerbalKonstructs
gameplay - career	Memorial Wall
gameplay - career	NIMBY
gameplay - career	Omega's Stockalike Structures
gameplay - career	Space Age
gameplay - career	Strategia

Settings are 50% everything (science, rep, etc.) and 150% fines for failures.

And I have to say, Kiwi TT + Kerbalism made early career so much more enjoyable. Several months in the game time and I'm still developing sounding rockets, trucks, subsonic planes, boats and stationary seismic measuring units to grab science required to do better sounding rocket with probe landing and  RCS together with SAS upgrade for probe cores - to do first orbit.

 

P.S. Merry Christmas to ya all!

Edited December 25, 2020 by evileye.x
Merry Christmas to ya all!

[Clamp-o-Tron]

@evileye.x I use most of those too. NIMBY is something I have used, but I’m more of a rocket than an airplane (for recovery) guy.

KTT might need to overhaul Strategia, as not all the strategies work with Kerbalism (which you should get, it’s not as bad as it looks, I swear), and the general concept of a probes before crew tech tree.

@hemeac said something about KCT a couple posts up, and I agree that the VerySlower preset is best for KTT balance even if it takes you 4 years to go orbital. I would say that research times need to be bumped up, along with possibly nerfing the “rush build” feature which is WAYYYYYY too OP when combined with a constant source of funds like Bureaucracy (I’ve been building 120-day rockets in 10 days!).

I love myself some contract packs, can say that all of those will be good with JNSQ, except anomaly surveyor.

Edited December 25, 2020 by Clamp-o-Tron

[MoeKitsune]

I've actually been working on a contract pack for KTT, inspired by the Probes Before Crew pack.

1 hour ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

That seems like a good option. I’m kind of taking the lead on contracts, but haven’t done very much yet. I suppose taking that over would be an option, if @pap1723would be OK with that.

All the stuff included looks great to keep, but @hemeacand I have thought about a few types not included:

  Hide contents

Sounding rockets altitude

 Sounding rockets downrange

GAP-alike contracts but with none of the rescues or airlines

Rocketplanes supersonic

Rocketplanes altitude

Kerbalism science collecting

Small (<500kg) payloads into low orbits*

Repeating launches into similar orbits with the same payload (equatorial, polar, geosynchronous, tundra)*
 

* Would probably mean a packaged subassembly to launch

Merry Christmas btw!

Is there any way I could help out? Those ideas are awesome!

[Clamp-o-Tron]

30 minutes ago, TheJewelOfJool said:

I've actually been working on a contract pack for KTT, inspired by the Probes Before Crew pack.

Is there any way I could help out? Those ideas are awesome!

That’s absolutely fantastic! If you’d like to join efforts, we could chat on the KTT discord (link in OP). The most pressing thing right now is probably getting the iteration frameworks that the contracts will run on built.

[hemeac]

@evileye.x , that's awesome!  That's exactly the type of experience that I was hoping to create, so glad that it's working as intended.  Happy to see you  @TheJewelOfJool, @Clamp-o-Tron, happy to see you all catching up on KSP as well over Christmas :-).  I've thrown up a channel on my discord server for contract packs if that's easiest enough for you all. Career Evolution was my go-to in my last career and agree has a really nice flow.  There is also an unfinished contract pack that I really liked the look of: 

I've contacted @KSP_Jack and had not heard from them, so need to assume that it is an all rights reserved license, but may have some good inspiration to work from.  Happy on you all taking the lead on what a good contract pack can look at.  I'm off work until Jan 4 and generally sticking around Melbourne outside of some day trips and catching up on some deferred house maintenance.  I'm hoping to get at least the stock placements settled by then and start working on some of early career engines and can coordinate balancing parts and contract parameters.

[hemeac]

11 hours ago, Hypercore said:

Really enjoys this tech tree mod! All the little features really come into play early game, as my other favorite tech tree mod, engineering tech tree, doesn't have a telemetry report. I would love Real Fuels integration though, then it will probably become my essential mod!

@Hypercore, Thanks!  I haven't tried Real Fuels, but have quickly browsed through some of the cfg files.  With the direction of the mod for 2.0, I don't think I could feasibly support the engines with upgrades, but I suspect that it could work with the upgrades to the engines disabled and possibly the fuel tank upgrades.  I've given myself a reminder on Github to test how well it works when I have finished up some of the backend work on the new upgrade config code.

Real Fuels may even work with KTT 1.3 if you try disabling the engine upgrades.  This should be the code that you would need, but may need a bit of fiddling on whether the system upgrades would need to be disabled.
 

@KIWI_GENERAL_SETTINGS:FIRST
{
	@UPGRADES
	{
		@ENGINE = off 			// Options: on/off Turning off will disable the engine upgrades in KTT
		@FUELTANK = off // Not sure how well these upgrades work with Real Fuels so may be safer to disable 			// Options: on/off Turning off will disable the fuel tank upgrades in KTT.  This includes the composite material upgrade for SRBs.
		//SYSTEM = on // These may need to be disabled as some have fuel, but still may work out ok.			// Options: on/off Turning off will disable the spaceplane system upgrades in KTT.
	}
}

 

[FreeThinker]

@hemeacI wil make sure KSPIE will become compatible with Kiwi tech tree.

Edit: Alright, its done.

Edited December 27, 2020 by FreeThinker

[hemeac]

13 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

@hemeacI wil make sure KSPIE will become compatible with Kiwi tech tree.

Edit: Alright, its done.

@FreeThinker, That's great, thanks!  I will need to mark it as compatible with CKAN as originally listed as incompatible due to the tech tree issue and had not tested the upgrades with KSPIE.  My 2.0 update to the tech tree will break existing saves, but that is about a month away at the very earliest.  I'll ping you when it is getting closer so can try and coordinate the update.

On the update front, the framework for engine upgrade system is largely complete for standard engines.  This will be used for the majority of single fuel-type engines that have one ModuleEngines (ie. stock and most mods).  This system allows engines to have B9 switches for different fuel types (ie. Hydrolox and Methalox) and will automatically convert the performance (ie. thrust and ISP) of the engines based on the baseline fuel type based on pre-set multipliers.  Engine costs and masses are able to change across fuel types as well.  These multipliers however can be overridden.  Using the Swivel as a proof of concept, I won't be allowing all engines to have four different fuel types.  I will be largely using existing mods to inform of the possible fuel types.  The exception will be the cryogenic engines in which as before, I will be adding a methalox variant.  In the update, I will be switching to Waterfall for the custom plumes for the CryoEngines mod.  Unless Nertea or someone else starts working on a large Methalox engine pack.

This flexibility in the type of upgrades will be restricted to the simpler engine-types.  The R.A.P.I.E.R. and some of the Kerbal Atomics engines will likely stick to something akin to the pre-existing upgrades due to their complexity.

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by hemeac

[flart]

Could you add a tier number to the name of node of upgrade in the description ?

<part> has an upgrade in <node_name> [<node_tier>]

this way it would be easier to find the node.

added the issue.

 

Unrelated to above, I added kiwi support to the CPT

Edited December 29, 2020 by flart

[hemeac]

@flart,  agree on <part> has an upgrade in <node_name> [<node_tier>].  Added that to the description text.  Awesome on CPT support!

[hemeac]

Crusader Kings 3 sucked up a lot of my free time this week, but have made some more progress on the tree.  On the late tiers, I have duplicated the id's from Interstellar (icons pending) as that will not only save time, that should help the user experience.  For Interstellar users, that mod  will still have the final say in the MM patch order war to determine node dependencies and locations as well as a few part locations.

@FreeThinker has also generously donated some time to develop a plugin for KTT that should help users that are switching mid-career.  The basic idea is that any of the early nodes that I have created should be auto unlocked if their children are unlocked.

Lastly, similar to Unkerballed Start, I have adopted empty nodes that indicate the Tier and they display both on the top and bottom of the tech tree.  This should help locate part upgrades as descriptions will now include the tier number of the upgrade, based on @flart's suggestion.

Edited December 31, 2020 by hemeac

[vardicd]

@hemeac Sorry if this has been answered somewhere already and I've just missed it, I'm not very far into the tech tree yet, only unlocking the 30 point cost nodes, are there nodes that unlock Mechjeb functionality in here? I've already got 1 or 2, can't remember exactly. SAS upgrades, and haven't gotten any new functions yet, and I don't see mechjeb in the list of compatible mods on the first page, so I was curious and thought I'd ask.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

36 minutes ago, vardicd said:

@hemeac Sorry if this has been answered somewhere already and I've just missed it, I'm not very far into the tech tree yet, only unlocking the 30 point cost nodes, are there nodes that unlock Mechjeb functionality in here? I've already got 1 or 2, can't remember exactly. SAS upgrades, and haven't gotten any new functions yet, and I don't see mechjeb in the list of compatible mods on the first page, so I was curious and thought I'd ask.

I’ve got a MechJeb configuration made up for KTT. Will make a PR with it very soon.

[hemeac]

The critical components to the 2.0 update are coming together and I really want to thank everyone who has been part of the development thus far and provided some really amazing feedback.  There will be a few changes that are worth noting and some repeating from earlier.

• Engines will now start off as "prototypes" with slightly worse ISP and Thrust.  There will be an upgrade to the primary specs and an upgraded variant.  To keep things simpler the flavor text having the variants have different names has been dropped.  This will also help keep compatibility with @flart's Community Parts Titles easier.
• Engine Upgrades will have a NEEDS set in MM that is based on the subfolder of the part (ie. Squad/Parts/Engine/ionEngine).  This will help prevent the upgrades breaking if users remove some parts of mods by culling specific folders (ie. BDB or Tantares).  However, this won't prevent issues with upgrades if users use PermaPrune in Janitor's Closet or just delete models and/or texture files within a folder.
• Solar panel upgrades will now be present irrespective of Near Future solar.  Each panel will have four variants: Basic, Advanced, Concentrating, Experimental.  Other than experimental, they take the names of Near Future Solar for compatibility reasons.  However, I am dropping the "per-tier" upgrades and having each type  unlock as you progress along the tech tree similar to the battery upgrades.  However, the solar panels will be spread out a bit further along the tech tree now.
• Descriptions for parts will now indicate the English names of the node in which the part unlocks as well as the Tier number.  Kept it to English to try as I have been trying to cut down the number of patches that need to be run.
• Part Upgrades in the Tech Tree are now shaded green thanks to a plugin by @FreeThinker
• Later tech tree nodes have been added to correspond to KSP Interstellar to help provide a more consistent experience
• The tree has shifted to the left for better spacing and now .  @Cruesoe had identified and fixed a bug in which opening the tech tree did not center around the start.
• @Clamp-o-Tron and @TheJewelOfJool are putting together a list of contracts to support the tree.
• The tech tree has nodes that represent the tier.  @ev0 has been working on an update for Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes which should make it pretty seamless to work perfectly with the tree.
• Base science unlock costs through Tier 12 will be about 20% higher than the Community Tech Tree, but by default now the costs will adjust to the number of science-heavy mods present.  Some branches like Nuclear Propulsion will have higher base costs relative to other nodes in the same tier to simulate the challenges to research.
• Unkerballed science will have the max science available reduced as originally intended as the default setting.

While I am waiting on ReStock/ReStock+ to update for 1.11 and to see if 1.11.1 fixes some of the critical bugs that popped up in 1.11 (Bug #26898: Extraneous part mass - Kerbal Space Program - Squad Bugtracker), I will be working on a small supplementary parts pack that will help the early career playthrough for those who have a lightly modded game.  You can see what parts I will be working on here: New Parts · Issue #76 · hemeac/kiwiTechTree (github.com).  If you have any suggestions on what may be a good addition let me know.  This will be bundled alongside KTT.

Edited January 4, 2021 by hemeac