[1.9.1 1.10.1 1.11.1] (Semi-) Saturatable Reaction Wheels

[DarthPointer]

I'm starting a new thread for the SRW mod I have recently rebuilt for a relativelly new KSP version 1.10.1. The mod has been abandoned by @Crzyrndm few years ago and then was kept rebuilt in a fork of @HebaruSan.  I found out that fork being more updated and featuring a couple of improvements only after rebuilding the mod on my own with a change that is critical for me. If I find more time to spend on the mod - the first thing I will do is adding the QoL tweaks from that fork. The only reason for the first version released by me to be called 2.0.0 is to prevent the mod's version names from being confusing.

(Semi-) Saturatable Reaction Wheels

Dependency -  ModuleManager

Download from GitHub or via CKAN

License - GPL v3

 

Features

• Reaction wheels accumulate momentum with use, torque output is modified based on the current stored momentum
• Stored momentum "magically" (ie. no basis in real physics) slowly decays over time, recovering the parts torque capabilities. The rate is configurable in the part configuration files (ie. you can turn it off, decrease the rate, or increase the rate to suit your play style)
• Stored momentum can also be discharged at the expense of propellant. Not enabled by default, change the file extension of ResourceDrain.txt to .cfg to enable

Before you download

I have not done much testing. Please report any problem you encounter with the mod.

I have not marked KSP 1.8.1 as compatible but I use it in my 1.8.1 heavily modded career and I'm sure I'll have a reason to explicitly declare compatibility after some time.

Changelog

v2.1.3

Added:

• New custom ico for toolbar button (by @Tedd_Deireadh, thanks!).

v2.1.2

Fixed:

• Non-EN KSP versions throwing exceptions or even failing to load.

v2.1.1

Fixed:

• Each time you entered flight scene, you got one more toolbar button.

v2.1.0

Added:

• RCS Fuel icon for "propelled" discharge toggle button. The button is now also red when the discharge is active.
• For-propellant discharge availability is now toggled not via file renaming, but mod's difficulty settings.
• Reasonless discharge can be both toggled and scaled in the difficulty settings (from no discharge up to 10 times faster than "default legacy speed").
• Icon in mod toolbar to toggle RW Window (so you don't need to search for an RW part to access it). As of now the icon used is the icon of vessel controll science node found in GameData/Squad. Its copy is put in the modfolder, a "better" icon is planned.

Fixed:

• RW Window is now a bit better spaced (the close button).
• RW Window treated in-physics craft with same names as a single one (probably it had some severe side-effects).

v2.0.0

• Built vs KSP 1.10.1
• Added a patch to remove SaturatabeRW module if we find a part lacking ModuleRecationWheel on zzz_ prefixed pass
• Fixed severe NRE spam if ModuleReactionWheel is removed (in a wierd way) by SETI mods.

Edited February 28, 2021 by DarthPointer
v2.1.3

[Stone Blue]

46 minutes ago, DarthPointer said:

 The only reason for the first version released by me to be called 2.0.0 is to prevent the mod's version names from being confusing.

Nice to see this updated again...
and not enuff "continuers/adopters" consider the little step in versioning to help clarify things...
waayyyy too many times, I am confused by continuations/adoptions, when names are so close, and versioning overlaps, or does anything but pick up from the very next version in the sequence.

[Drew Kerman]

sweet, this will hopefully pair nicely with PersistentRotation, recently revived as well. Currently I'm using MandatoryRCS mod to get both of these features but it hasn't been serviced in a while and it's dubiously working on more recent KSP versions. Thanks for the update and hope you continue with the QoL fork at the very least

[DarthPointer]

The QoL update is here, I've also smashed a small but probably nasty bug, meet the 2.1.0!

 

Added:

• RCS Fuel icon for "propelled" discharge toggle button. The button is now also red when the discharge is active.
• For-propellant discharge availability is now toggled not via file renaming, but mod's difficulty settings.
• Reasonless discharge can be both toggled and scaled in the difficulty settings (from no discharge up to 10 times faster than "default legacy speed").
• Icon in mod toolbar to toggle RW Window (so you don't need to search for an RW part to access it). As of now the icon used is the icon of vessel controll science node found in GameData/Squad. Its copy is put in the modfolder, a "better" icon is planned.

Fixed:

• RW Window is now a bit better spaced (the close button).
• RW Window treated in-physics craft with same names as a single one (probably it had some severe side-effects).

[DarthPointer]

I got a report of NREs on game loading for KSP 1.11.1, mod 2.1.0 while 2.0.0 being ok but failed reproducing it.

However I have found out that each time I enter flight scene there is one more button in the Toolbar.

Mod version 2.1.1 is released to fixed it.

Edited February 22, 2021 by DarthPointer

[DarthPointer]

It has turned out that the issues on loading KSP were connected with game language. KSP that use non-EN locstrings for RCS modules descriptions (GetInfo if it helps you understand what I'm speaking about) were affected as one of the modules used to depend on EN version of string. Version 2.1.2 is out to fix it.

Fixed:

• Non-EN KSP versions throwing exceptions or even failing to load.

Edited February 28, 2021 by DarthPointer

[HoneyBadger]

Hi. I am using this with RSS/RP-1. In the tech tree it shows that it requires mono propellant. Is this correct? I thought it would only require EC.  

[DarthPointer]

1 hour ago, HoneyBadger said:

Hi. I am using this with RSS/RP-1. In the tech tree it shows that it requires mono propellant. Is this correct? I thought it would only require EC.  

Hi!

Yes, it can consume monopropellant. It is the "dump accumulated torque" feature to do it. It is here to "simulate" you decelerating the wheels and burning RCS simultaneosly the way you dont affect vessel's rotation. AFAIK it is disabled by default, you can change it in difficylty settings. When the feature is enabled you will see buttons to activate the torque dumping in the RW Window. And it is the only case the wheels consume fuel.

Apart from this "torque dumping" it does not need anything but EC. You still can dump the torque manually just for EC, The only difference is you will have to counter the "recoil" after that using your regular RCS.

Edited March 9, 2021 by DarthPointer

[KerbalSofaProgram]

hey very nice! i'm going to be one of those people and request a feature... some sort of global adjustment for the torque of reaction wheels would be amazing. mandatory rcs does this to an extent but i don't like all the extra stuff it throws in, and as a poster above me mentioned it might be out of date, i haven't looked myself. this is what i used to use, " https://spacedock.info/mod/879/Reaction Wheel Rebalance " which is even more out of date, which is why i thought i'd bring up the idea to you. thanks for reading this (thumbs up goes here)

[DarthPointer]

20 hours ago, KerbalSofaProgram said:

hey very nice! i'm going to be one of those people and request a feature... some sort of global adjustment for the torque of reaction wheels would be amazing. mandatory rcs does this to an extent but i don't like all the extra stuff it throws in, and as a poster above me mentioned it might be out of date, i haven't looked myself. this is what i used to use, " https://spacedock.info/mod/879/Reaction Wheel Rebalance " which is even more out of date, which is why i thought i'd bring up the idea to you. thanks for reading this (thumbs up goes here)

Using runtime code to change power of RW is generally a bad design.

IMHO this should be left for an MM patch with FINAL pass. Probably I should pack a plug'n'play .cfg into downloadables with single value to be changed by player, but definitly not a sort of a slider in difficulty settings.

[KerbalSofaProgram]

2 hours ago, DarthPointer said:

Probably I should pack a plug'n'play .cfg into downloadables with single value to be changed by player, but definitly not a sort of a slider in difficulty settings.

a slider would be super user friendly, but it doesn't seem like there's really much demand at all for weaker reaction wheels, and like you said, it's a bad idea, even though i couldn't guess why. and actually opening something with notepad is pretty user friendly already. i'd say if you felt like going through the trouble of popping a configuration in there that would awesome. if anyone wanted it it would be an easy option... anyone being me and a handful of other people, apparently... well i'm on the verge of getting off topic. thanks for reading my post, and if that's something you feel like doing, then double thanks.

[Reddy]

I very much like the idea behind this mod. However, I see several problems with it that make it rather unpleasant to play for me. So let me ask a few questions:

1. The RWs store momentum in 3 axes independently and I can lose control e.g. in yaw only while still maintaining roll authority. I can regain control by spinning in the opposite direction. Question: how do I know which way to spin in order to "dump" momentum?
2. There is the feature to dump momentum using monopropellant. How does that work? Does adding a reaction wheel and a monoprop tank allow me to magically unload momentum, or does it automatically interface with the RCS on my vessel?
3. Finally, in Realism Overhaul careers there is no such thing as monopropellant. Is there a (reliable) way to dump using whatever RCS my vessel currently has installed?

Edited May 26, 2021 by Reddy
style

[DarthPointer]

14 hours ago, Reddy said:

I very much like the idea behind this mod. However, I see several problems with it that make it rather unpleasant to play for me. So let me ask a few questions:

1. The RWs store momentum in 3 axes independently and I can lose control e.g. in yaw only while still maintaining roll authority. I can regain control by spinning in the opposite direction. Question: how do I know which way to spin in order to "dump" momentum?
2. There is the feature to dump momentum using monopropellant. How does that work? Does adding a reaction wheel and a monoprop tank allow me to magically unload momentum, or does it automatically interface with the RCS on my vessel?
3. Finally, in Realism Overhaul careers there is no such thing as monopropellant. Is there a (reliable) way to dump using whatever RCS my vessel currently has installed?

1. While the mod author warns us that the "physics" of the mod are pretty much different from IRL ones, all the conservation laws seem to be "conserved" from my experience. (The author, not me, I'm a fly-by user who rebuilt it with adding few QoLs, having nearly-to-no-idea about the maths behind the core feature.) In case you spin with unstable axis, axis flucuations and swaps (modeled by stock in-scene physics when not warping), momentum usage of RW's axes changes. The way that if you disable "reasonless" momentum recovery, if you start spinning and then terminate vessel spinning back to initial momentum (both using RWs only), your RW's will have same momentum load as before you started spinning (relative to what is your current "inertial reference" of scene).

2. You open RW Window (via PAW or stock mod toolbar), there you choose vessel you want (active vessel will be outlined as green). There you will see all the vessel's RWs and on the right of each RW part name there are dump buttons. They consume monopropellant and electricity, emulating that you decelerate the wheels and perfectly compensate recoil burning RCS. Yes, not any realistic, not involving RCS thruster parts. But I fully appreciate the idea of having it in the game for this mod beacause the only alternative I see is kOS/kRPC/insert any other KSP brainquack lang. REMINDER: this feature availability is toggled in SSWR's tab in "Difficulty Settings".

3. That is a matter of config, SSRW assumes there is monoprop only. The best solution I see is using B9PS to alter "fuel" resource to what your vessel's RCS fuel is. So that you have to give these parts a B9PS module that switches one of the fields between what RO assumes to be RCS fuels. IIRC SSRW emulates consumption via ficticious RCS PartModule so it shoul be possible to feed it a mixture like UDMH+NTO.

[Krydax]

The RW window seems to be having a bug.

https://imgur.com/a/ciIURyZ

Not sure why it's just the tiny window with an x. Maybe has something to do with 1.12? Not sure.

Also, my available torque isn't "regenerating" over time. I thought it was supposed to come back slowly?

EDIT: Actually it seems like the whole thing is bugged. If I launch a probe into space and then just use roll in a single direction for a while, the available roll torque goes down, but if I then introduce a bit of pitch or yaw, all the numbers go haywire as the craft spins around crazily (no stability assist on). So like, it's regenerating torque not from actually applying reaction wheels, but from simply spinning, which I'm quite sure is not the intended behavior.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Krydax

[DarthPointer]

On 7/13/2021 at 7:54 PM, Krydax said:

The RW window seems to be having a bug.

https://imgur.com/a/ciIURyZ

Not sure why it's just the tiny window with an x. Maybe has something to do with 1.12? Not sure.

Also, my available torque isn't "regenerating" over time. I thought it was supposed to come back slowly?

EDIT: Actually it seems like the whole thing is bugged. If I launch a probe into space and then just use roll in a single direction for a while, the available roll torque goes down, but if I then introduce a bit of pitch or yaw, all the numbers go haywire as the craft spins around crazily (no stability assist on). So like, it's regenerating torque not from actually applying reaction wheels, but from simply spinning, which I'm quite sure is not the intended behavior.

For 1.12 they changed Unity version, didn't they? Not a surprise mod built for 1.11 has issues.

I did not get into the maths behind the mod's momentum conservation (which is left unchanged after the adoption). But I have tested it and this axial momentum exchange seems to confrom the idea of conservation to some extent. Like if you get some positive pitch and then roll for 180 degrees, you end up with changing the sign of RW accumulated pitch momentum. So you can't cheat the wheels to provide you infinite momentum.

UPD: How to make sure it is fine: disable reasonless regeneration and get a craft into space. Have no RCS input and no atmosphere to disturb the craft. Ensure your RWs are fresh (0 accumulated momentum, or all axes are 100% free). Spin the vessel however you like. Then enable SAS to make a full-stop of rotation or stop it manually. You should end up having zero momentum accumulated in the RWs.

Edited July 16, 2021 by DarthPointer

[Krydax]

IDK I didn't know what changed in 1.12 I've been away for quite a while now, I just thought I would report the bug!

I think this isn't the mod I thought it was, as I was remembering one that simply reduced torque as you continued rotating in a single direction, and then it would slowly regenerate once you stopped rotating in that direction, and that was it. It didn't track all the axes and regenerate based on reverse direction or anything.

Thanks for the response!

[eberkain]

nevermind me

Edited January 14, 2022 by eberkain

[Skalou]

On 7/16/2021 at 5:58 PM, Krydax said:

IDK I didn't know what changed in 1.12 I've been away for quite a while now, I just thought I would report the bug!

I think this isn't the mod I thought it was, as I was remembering one that simply reduced torque as you continued rotating in a single direction, and then it would slowly regenerate once you stopped rotating in that direction, and that was it. It didn't track all the axes and regenerate based on reverse direction or anything.

Thanks for the response!

Mandadory RCS ?