kerbal ftl [Min KSP 1.12.2] Blueshift: Kerbal FTL

[Rakete]

Any info when to expect the new mass effect-ish mass manipulator? 

Looking forward to it.

[Angelo Kerman]

10 hours ago, Rakete said:

Any info when to expect the new mass effect-ish mass manipulator? 

Looking forward to it.

I've had an insane work schedule coupled with moving for the past month and a half, and am still working on the multi-segment warp coils. No ETA as yet. Part of my goal is to not put timelines out as that caused a lot of burnout before. It depends upon time, interest, work, etc.

[Rakete]

On 4/13/2024 at 7:24 PM, Angelo Kerman said:

I've had an insane work schedule coupled with moving for the past month and a half, and am still working on the multi-segment warp coils. No ETA as yet. Part of my goal is to not put timelines out as that caused a lot of burnout before. It depends upon time, interest, work, etc.

Alright. Just take your time. I love your stuff. Just take all the time you need. Juat don't burn out and have a nice cup of tea. 

 

Best greetings from central europe

[Angelo Kerman]

On 4/16/2024 at 11:11 AM, Rakete said:

Alright. Just take your time. I love your stuff. Just take all the time you need. Juat don't burn out and have a nice cup of tea. 

 

Best greetings from central europe

I was able to investigate creating a mass effect core and suffice to say that it's no simple task due to the way that KSP calculates mass in various places. There was a mod some time ago that had a method that technically worked, but it really messes with the delta-v calculations. For those interested, it's this one:

I'm finding that to get a proper mass effect core to work would require a large amount of effort that might not be worth the trouble.

[Angelo Kerman]

Yeah, I hate to say it but a mass effect core in KSP isn't practical. There's too many places where I'd have to change how delta-v is computed, plus it fundamentally changes the rocket equation. On top of that, to keep acceleration low, you'd have to throttle the engines way back, and lose the cool exhaust plume effects. In order to get a vessel that looks cool with exhaust effects and has high acceleration and high ISP (essentially what a mass effect core does) I'd have to fiddle with engines, fix joint strength, and who knows what else. Just not worth the effort, especially when I have a gravitic engine already in Kerbal Flying Saucers.

So, instead, I'm looking at an old phenomenon from the early days of Blueshift: warp dragging. Back in the day, if you went to warp when another ship was in physics range, the other ship would be dragged along with you. It was a bug, and one that people used to drag other things like asteroids around. I'm thinking about making that possible again, but the active warp engine would need to account for the other object(s) mass. That would mean you could drag other objects, but they'd slow you down. Warp Dragging would be an optional feature that you can configure in Settings.

[LTQ90]

Warp dragging seems a great idea. I never get an asteroid on orbit around Kerbin or Mun.

Tx for your work Angelo.

[Angelo Kerman]

Star Frontier can't exceed light speed while dragging the asteroid, but that's ok. Warp Dragging accounts for the mass of nearby vessels now. It doesn't work when you warp during timewarp though. It might be possible but for now it's real-time only.

[Angelo Kerman]

Oh yeah, warp dragging during timewarp is definitely not possible. The moment that I add cruise control velocity to all the loaded vessels, they instantly fly out of formation and off to who knows where. I'll have to see if I can add a failsafe to prevent timewarp during warp dragging.

[JadeOfMaar]

7 hours ago, Angelo Kerman said:

if I can add a failsafe to prevent timewarp during warp dragging.

Familiar card: [Cannot timewarp while vessel is under acceleration] 

[Angelo Kerman]

"Cannot timewarp while vessel is warp dragging" is what people will see if they try to timewarp while warp dragging. Thanks for the suggestion!

I'm also looking into the possibility of auto-circularizing while warp dragging...

[AmanitaVerna]

Would it be difficult to turn warp dragging into a tractor beam projected by an emitter that you could lock onto specific targets?

[Angelo Kerman]

2 hours ago, AmanitaVerna said:

Would it be difficult to turn warp dragging into a tractor beam projected by an emitter that you could lock onto specific targets?

That would actually be more like the stock Advanced Grabbing Unit. Instead of a claw, you'd have a beam of light.

[Angelo Kerman]

Unfortunately I'm unable to circularize the orbits of nearby spacecraft along with the active vessel. The game just won't let me do it. Just another limitation of warp dragging...

The idea of a tractor beam though... Perhaps I could modify the stock grappler code so that it draws a beam...

[Rakete]

Mhmmm... warp dragging seems to be not my cup of tea... 

Maybe there are others sci-fi-ish ideas, that could be implemented. But this dragging... i don't see me enabling it. Thanks for making it optional. For me it's more an immersion breaker to take everything in physics range with me instead of leaving a space station's vicinity with warp speed, like the enterprise did in StarTrek III.

Edited April 20, 2024 by Rakete

[Angelo Kerman]

Yup, definitely optional.

In lieu of a true mass effect core, I'm looking into a contragravity generator. Think of hover mode from my Kerbal Flying Saucers' gravitic engine, but built for Blueshift as an alternative. The generator cancels 95% of a planet's gravity, leaving the craft's inertial mass- and its delta-v- intact. Here's a quick look (with the S2 warp core standing in for the generator's 3D model):

The closes analogy to this device would be the "Hack Gravity" cheat function, but only applied to the vessel.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

@Angelo Kerman

I was having some issues with the space dust parts, they were not working under any conditions. 

I believe the issue was caused by their minHarvestValues being higher than the maxAbundance of most graviolium belts in the config.

I submitted pull requests to blueshift and flying saucers with what I think is a solution.

 

Also, I still can't drill asteroids for graviolium (blueshift 1.9.5 & flying saucers 1.1.1)

 

I love this mod, it's probably the best FTL mod out there, but these issues really spoiled the experience; I ended up cheating in resources most of the time.

Please check the pull requests and see if they are correct, I am new to modding so I may have messed something up.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

On 2/28/2023 at 5:44 AM, Rakete said:

@Angelo Kerman

I guess I found two bugs:

1.  The Bussard collectors only work, if a warp core is present. So you can't make sub-light-Gravi-collectors.

2. I placed an ugly testrig in the Kerbin gravi ring. See here: The Gravi-flux is exactly zero. Not 0.00000000x but exactly 0. The resource collector (patched by blueshift to collect also graviolium (thanks for the Patch, Angelo, by the way. It does fit in really nicely!) ) from Far Future Tech works in the same place. Interestingly the Blueshift-collectors seem to collect LqDeut and other stuff present there in the ring - just not gravi, even if present in the ring, like LqDeut. Strange.

 

 

@Rakete

Assuming you use Space Dust, I think I figured out this issue; space dust configs were incorrect. Posted here

and made some pull requests.

 

If you were trying to use the stock exospheric gathering system, I believe you need to be at either 6000 meters or 600000m  orbit. I'll check the configs and get back to you.

[Angelo Kerman]

12 hours ago, KspNoobUsernameTaken said:

@Angelo Kerman

I was having some issues with the space dust parts, they were not working under any conditions. 

I believe the issue was caused by their minHarvestValues being higher than the maxAbundance of most graviolium belts in the config.

I submitted pull requests to blueshift and flying saucers with what I think is a solution.

 

Also, I still can't drill asteroids for graviolium (blueshift 1.9.5 & flying saucers 1.1.1)

 

I love this mod, it's probably the best FTL mod out there, but these issues really spoiled the experience; I ended up cheating in resources most of the time.

Please check the pull requests and see if they are correct, I am new to modding so I may have messed something up.

Thanks for the PR, I'll review it and bring it into Blueshift and KFS.

I've verified that Blueshift is able to harvest Graviolium from asteroids and comets. I'm also updating the patches so that Blueshift takes precedence over KFS, since it has better ground harvesters. I should have that update by the weekend along with your changes.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

8 hours ago, Angelo Kerman said:

Thanks for the PR, I'll review it and bring it into Blueshift and KFS.

I've verified that Blueshift is able to harvest Graviolium from asteroids and comets. I'm also updating the patches so that Blueshift takes precedence over KFS, since it has better ground harvesters. I should have that update by the weekend along with your changes.

Thanks @Angelo Kerman

I should note however, with the base configuration of space dust resource bands, graviolium harvesting is extremely slow. I'm talking 5-6 days for 1 unit graviolium. I think it would make more sense if the min & max abundance of resource bands were increased by a couple orders of magnitude.

 

I'll try and retest the asteroid harvesters without flying saucers to see if it changes anything.

 

Is it possible to use the gravitic engines without flying saucers?

 

[Pegboard]

19 minutes ago, KspNoobUsernameTaken said:

I should note however, with the base configuration of space dust resource bands, graviolium harvesting is extremely slow. I'm talking 5-6 days for 1 unit graviolium. I think it would make more sense if the min & max abundance of resource bands were increased by a couple orders of magnitude.

 

To be totally fair, it does encourage you to actually pursue the other pathways to graviolium. Though, since AFAIK space dust doesn't work when you're not on the craft, so it makes it kind of painful to actually use it.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

1 hour ago, Pegboard said:

To be totally fair, it does encourage you to actually pursue the other pathways to graviolium. Though, since AFAIK space dust doesn't work when you're not on the craft, so it makes it kind of painful to actually use it.

That is true; thing is, some weird thing occured in my install so that asteroids had no graviolium, so I was trying to use space dust, and with that  slow gathering speed, it was pointless.

Also, according to the Space Dust wiki, it does have background resource harvesting, just not very well tested 

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

11 hours ago, Angelo Kerman said:

I've verified that Blueshift is able to harvest Graviolium from asteroids and comets. I'm also updating the patches so that Blueshift takes precedence over KFS, since it has better ground harvesters. I should have that update by the weekend along with your changes.

I see in the config that:

@PART[PotatoRoid]:NEEDS[!WildBlueIndustries/FlyingSaucers]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleAsteroidResource

		resourceName = Graviolium
		presenceChance = 45
		lowRange = 5
		highRange = 25
	}
}

The asteroid resource patch requires not having FlyingSaucers.

Does this mean that with flying saucers, it is impossible to mine asteroids for graviolium? If so, why?

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

@Angelo Kerman

I uninstalled KFS and tried asteroid mining again...

It worked, but at timewarp >= 1000, it stopped the asteroid harvester and required manual restarting. I was using infinite electric charge and had more than enough cooling. Any idea what the issue is?

 

Edit:

So if I run it at timewarp 1000, it cuts off ~50% of the time. 10000 cuts it off 100% of the time. I might just remove the thermal efficiency and autoshutdown parts of the mod.

 

Edit 2: 

I tried leaving harvesters on and going to the tracking station view, then timewarping from there. When I started flying the vessel again, the harvesters had gathered no graviolium, and the warp engine I left on had used everything up. 

Edited May 1, 2024 by KspNoobUsernameTaken

[Angelo Kerman]

19 hours ago, KspNoobUsernameTaken said:

@Angelo Kerman

I uninstalled KFS and tried asteroid mining again...

It worked, but at timewarp >= 1000, it stopped the asteroid harvester and required manual restarting. I was using infinite electric charge and had more than enough cooling. Any idea what the issue is?

 

Edit:

So if I run it at timewarp 1000, it cuts off ~50% of the time. 10000 cuts it off 100% of the time. I might just remove the thermal efficiency and autoshutdown parts of the mod.

 

Edit 2: 

I tried leaving harvesters on and going to the tracking station view, then timewarping from there. When I started flying the vessel again, the harvesters had gathered no graviolium, and the warp engine I left on had used everything up. 

You can thank Squad for some of that. Try a stock game, no mods, and try drilling an asteroid and see what happens.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

1 minute ago, Angelo Kerman said:

You can thank Squad for some of that. Try a stock game, no mods, and try drilling an asteroid and see what happens.

Yeah, I had experienced stuff like that before. Was just hoping it was a mod issue so that it could be fixed more easily. Anyway, with regard to the Space Dust collectors, I am playing with boosted resource bands (1000 times higher abundance), because the asteroids seem to hate me. 

 

Is it intended behavior that with KFS, asteroid mining for graviolium doesn't work?  Also, is KFS required for gravitic engines. It seems like it?