KARE 2.1 [Sep 22, 2024]

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, Rakete said:

Under certain points of view the textures flicker and show stange beige color:

That's the Restock-based DepthMask feature. IF it breaks for KARE then it breaks for all Restocked parts in your game. That's just a Unity bug and I know at least one person who regularly suffers it. Can't be helped.

2 hours ago, Rakete said:

@JadeOfMaar Little Bugreport: If you have an older version (in my case 0.5.2) of stock waterfall effects installed (because I like those plumes more, than the actual ones) the two multimodal engines generate Nulrefspam when in closed cycle mode and show no plume.

Perhaps the particular nuclear engine plume doesn't exist yet or it has a different name.

[Rakete]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

That's the Restock-based DepthMask feature. IF it breaks for KARE then it breaks for all Restocked parts in your game. That's just a Unity bug and I know at least one person who regularly suffers it. Can't be helped.

Perhaps the particular nuclear engine plume doesn't exist yet or it has a different name.

Don't have restock.

 

This is the Nerva-Config of SWE 0.5.2:

What have I to change in your KARE-Waterfall config? If it is just changing one ore two words in your KARE-waterfall-config, maybe you can tell me, which words to exchange at which places

@PART[nuclearEngine]:NEEDS[Waterfall]:FOR[StockWaterfallEffects]
{
  !fx_exhaustFlame_blue = DELETE
  !fx_exhaustLight_blue = DELETE
  !fx_smokeTrail_light = DELETE
  !sound_vent_medium = DELETE
  !sound_rocket_hard = DELETE
  !sound_vent_soft = DELETE
  !sound_explosion_low = DELETE
  // Removes the stock effect block, and replace it with one that has no particles
  !EFFECTS {}
  EFFECTS
    {
        engage
        {
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = Waterfall/Sounds/KW/sound_liq7
                volume = 0.6
                pitch = 0.7
                loop = false
            }
        }
        disengage
        {
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = sound_vent_soft
                volume = 1.0
                pitch = 0.7
                loop = false
            }
        }
        flameout
        {
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = sound_explosion_low
                volume = 1.0
                pitch = 0.7
                loop = false
            }
        }
		fx-nerv-running
		{
            AUDIO
            {
                channel = Ship
                clip = sound_rocket_hard
                volume = 0.0 0.0
                volume = 0.01 0.1
                volume = 0.5 0.35
                volume = 1.0 0.7
                pitch = 0.0 0.5
                pitch = 1.0 0.7
                loop = true
            }
        }
    }
  
  @MODULE[ModuleEngines*]
   {
    @name = ModuleEnginesFX
	%runningEffectName = fx-nerv-running
   }
  
  MODULE
  {
    name = ModuleWaterfallFX
    moduleID = nukeFX

    CONTROLLER
    {
      name = atmosphereDepth
      linkedTo = atmosphere_density
    }
    CONTROLLER
    {
      name = throttle
      linkedTo = throttle
	  engineID = basicEngine
	  responseRateUp = 0.03
      responseRateDown = 0.2
    }
	
	CONTROLLER
	{
		name = random1
		linkedTo = random
		noiseType = perlin
		scale = 0.5
		minimum = -0.5
		speed = 8
		seed = 15
	}
	CONTROLLER
	{
		name = random2
		linkedTo = random
		noiseType = perlin
		scale = 0.5
		minimum = -0.5
		speed = 10
		seed = 15
	}
	
   TEMPLATE
    {
      templateName = stock-nuclear-upper-1
      overrideParentTransform = thrustTransform
      scale = 1,1,1
      rotation = 0,0,0
      position = 0,0,0
    }
	
   TEMPLATE
    {
      templateName = stock-nuclear-core
      overrideParentTransform = thrustTransform
      scale = 1,1,1
      rotation = 0,0,0
      position = 0,0,0
    }
  }
}

 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Rakete

[JadeOfMaar]

1 minute ago, Rakete said:

What have I to change in your KARE-Waterfall config?

Find and replace stock-nuclear-upper-2 (two instances). Your sample config shows stock-nuclear-upper-1 which clearly exists.

[Rakete]

21 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Find and replace stock-nuclear-upper-2 (two instances). Your sample config shows stock-nuclear-upper-1 which clearly exists.

Thanks, this works well!

And what about core? do I need this too?

   TEMPLATE
    {
      templateName = stock-nuclear-core
      overrideParentTransform = thrustTransform
      scale = 1,1,1
      rotation = 0,0,0
      position = 0,0,0

Edited December 23, 2022 by Rakete

[JadeOfMaar]

41 minutes ago, Rakete said:

And what about core? do I need this too?

Sorry, idk. I haven't looked into the GitHub to know what other templates do or don't exist in your version of it.

[Rakete]

It looks good with the upper-1. I guess, that the other template is in place to make the engine bell of the nerva glow slightly.

So I will go along with the upper-1 plume from the config. It makes it look good and that's sufficient for me. Somehow I feel, I shouldn't over-use the KARE-engines, 'cause they are kinda overpowered by not needing any ressources in atmospheric flight except fresh nice air.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Rakete

[kerbnub]

Hey, I love the idea of nuclear airbreathing rocket and I like the models and animations for these engines the most. I've been wanting to add them to my semirealistic career (mostly stock balance with JSNQ and Kerbalism). I'm just curious as to your thinking behind your engines' performance, and if you know what might be realistic performance for such engines (if these are not). The few engines I've seen from similar mods seem to be all over the place, so I don't know what's realistic to expect. IIRC, airbreathing nuclear engines from KSPI had similar performance to these, with thrust dropping off around past mach 8 or 9, while the Near Future Aeronautics engines have worse performance, dropping off around mach 6 like rapiers. Do you have any idea what is realistic? Have any reasoning how how these would be so good at hypersonic speeds? Or how did you decide on your thrust and isp values?

Edited January 1, 2023 by kerbnub

[JadeOfMaar]

On 1/1/2023 at 6:32 AM, kerbnub said:

Hey, I love the idea of nuclear airbreathing rocket and I like the models and animations for these engines the most. I've been wanting to add them to my semirealistic career (mostly stock balance with JSNQ and Kerbalism). I'm just curious as to your thinking behind your engines' performance, and if you know what might be realistic performance for such engines (if these are not). The few engines I've seen from similar mods seem to be all over the place, so I don't know what's realistic to expect. IIRC, airbreathing nuclear engines from KSPI had similar performance to these, with thrust dropping off around past mach 8 or 9, while the Near Future Aeronautics engines have worse performance, dropping off around mach 6 like rapiers. Do you have any idea what is realistic? Have any reasoning how how these would be so good at hypersonic speeds? Or how did you decide on your thrust and isp values?

Hi there. I'd like to think that these have realistic performance. Their tuning has been advised by two or more folks who know very well about thermodynamics plus a little creative liberty by myself to allow them to decently outperform engines from other mods that try to be realistic. The thing about Mach 6 is that's the start of scramjet territory and any ramjet becomes useless there. As intake air temperature gets hotter exponentially faster, the exhaust temperature quickly becomes relatively cold. If the exhaust is colder than the intake, there's no thrust. My engines are tuned to produce a few degrees more heat and threaten to melt when operating in hypersonic. This reflects the concept of intentionally running the reactor core much hotter to ensure the exhaust is always hotter than the intake. KSPIE's engines might be riding the same train of thought here. Aside from that piece of realism, my engines can run up to Mach 9 because I like scramjets and the idea of SSTOs or hypersonic cruisers which include scramjets...but stock scale has no room for these. If players of 2.7x and even real scale are using and enjoying this mod, I'm quite satisfied.

Some more creative liberty: As ramjets and scramjets are effectively "pressure fed" (from forward motion) engines, they are tuned to be able to operate much better in near-vacuum but also to have their thrust scale with how full they are with intake air, and so they become more rocket-like and have a bit more reason to have a generous top speed. (This might also be a big help in preventing cases of asymmetric flameouts.) As pressure fed engines they ideally should have much worse performance at subsonic speed but for playability's sake, they may prove to be quite wasteful or unusable if fired at stand-still in thick atmosphere with that setting.

It is my impression that the NF Aero engines are tuned with consideration only for expected use on stock sized Kerbin and Duna and are heavy for heavy's sake because they have nuclear cores. I tune mine to be believable and more interesting and usable on wider varieties of worlds with atmospheres.

As you mention Kerbalism, and concerning @Rakete's concern for overusing these engines: They receive additional funcionality if Rational Resources Nuclear Family (RRNF) is installed (This shouldn't require Rational Resources itself). Firstly: A nuclear reactor feature which produces ThermalPower (an additional propellant) and an additional converter for that to ElectricCharge, but that nuclear feature can fail due to overheat, which can also cause the engines to weaken and shut down. Secondarily: They get Kerbalism radioactivity.

I wouldn't be concerned about overusing the engines. If your space program, or society, gets to commercially available ANP (Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion) (see: the IRL situation of fully electric aviation if that happens) anyone who tries to argue to keep using engines that burn liquid fuel is going to get laughed out of the meeting room. Which reminds me, I wanted to provide a nuclear thermal propfan or two (for subsonic/transsonic airliners or for VTOL) but scrapped that.

How I decide thrust and Isp? Well I mainly felt out the thrust with a test plane (and with the stock Whiplash as reference) and the engine's mass -- seeking a balance between "heavy because nuclear" and "very playable." How I decide Isp? Well, 2000 sec (for air-breathing) is a very nice baseline to me, and I think it's an established standard by now. It can't be super efficient like a conventional chemical jet engine and it should probably be worse than an air-breathing RAPIER (propellant units per sec look very good at 2000 also) but it can't be as inefficient as a chemical scramjet (1300 ~ 1500 sec) as it would be too demanding on mass flow from the intake and/or onboard propellant. That said, when I do make scramjets, I won't hold back from giving them that bad Isp. That's just how they are.

[kerbnub]

Thank you for the detailed response!  

On 1/2/2023 at 8:02 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

Hi there. I'd like to think that these have realistic performance. Their tuning has been advised by two or more folks who know very well about thermodynamics plus a little creative liberty by myself to allow them to decently outperform engines from other mods that try to be realistic. The thing about Mach 6 is that's the start of scramjet territory and any ramjet becomes useless there. As intake air temperature gets hotter exponentially faster, the exhaust temperature quickly becomes relatively cold. If the exhaust is colder than the intake, there's no thrust. My engines are tuned to produce a few degrees more heat and threaten to melt when operating in hypersonic. This reflects the concept of intentionally running the reactor core much hotter to ensure the exhaust is always hotter than the intake. KSPIE's engines might be riding the same train of thought here. Aside from that piece of realism, my engines can run up to Mach 9 because I like scramjets and the idea of SSTOs or hypersonic cruisers which include scramjets...but stock scale has no room for these. If players of 2.7x and even real scale are using and enjoying this mod, I'm quite satisfied.

Some more creative liberty: As ramjets and scramjets are effectively "pressure fed" (from forward motion) engines, they are tuned to be able to operate much better in near-vacuum but also to have their thrust scale with how full they are with intake air, and so they become more rocket-like and have a bit more reason to have a generous top speed. (This might also be a big help in preventing cases of asymmetric flameouts.) As pressure fed engines they ideally should have much worse performance at subsonic speed but for playability's sake, they may prove to be quite wasteful or unusable if fired at stand-still in thick atmosphere with that setting.

I'm still unclear on this part. So would it be correct to say (maybe I'm just restating you) these are supposed to essentially be ramjets with some turbines in front for lower speed function? And they can function up to mach 9 (while chemical combustion based engines would top out around 6) because a nuclear engine core can get the air much hotter, making the break point higher? I assume they're not meant to actually be functioning as scramjets, otherwise they'd go faster than mach 9 (I think?).  I mostly wonder about the mach 6-9 part, as I don't know of any concepts that can go from mach 0-6 but also mach 6+.  I also thought turbines would get in the way of a functional scramjet cycle. Or is it all more abstracted for you?  I just would like to be clear on where the handwavium is and maybe learn about some new cool propulsion concepts .
 

On 1/2/2023 at 8:02 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

As you mention Kerbalism, and concerning @Rakete's concern for overusing these engines: They receive additional funcionality if Rational Resources Nuclear Family (RRNF) is installed (This shouldn't require Rational Resources itself). Firstly: A nuclear reactor feature which produces ThermalPower (an additional propellant) and an additional converter for that to ElectricCharge, but that nuclear feature can fail due to overheat, which can also cause the engines to weaken and shut down. Secondarily: They get Kerbalism radioactivity.

Oh, nice! I was making custom configs do the same. Do you know if the RRNF configs play well with Nertea's SystemHeat?  I'm relying heavily on Nertea's mods in this career. I started copying and editing some SH engine configs to get that functionality, but I think something is bugged and am not sure how to get the power/heat functionality I want (I'm also not very experienced at config editing, so I'm probably missing something).

My ideal behavior is that engines should generate heat/electricity based on power level and be cooled by propellant. So while the reactor is running, you don't need radiators to prevent overheat while the engine is thrusting, but you do need radiators if running them just for EC. 

[JadeOfMaar]

2 hours ago, kerbnub said:

I'm still unclear on this part. So would it be correct to say (maybe I'm just restating you) these are supposed to essentially be ramjets with some turbines in front for lower speed function? And they can function up to mach 9 (while chemical combustion based engines would top out around 6) because a nuclear engine core can get the air much hotter, making the break point higher? I assume they're not meant to actually be functioning as scramjets, otherwise they'd go faster than mach 9 (I think?).  I mostly wonder about the mach 6-9 part, as I don't know of any concepts that can go from mach 0-6 but also mach 6+.  I also thought turbines would get in the way of a functional scramjet cycle. Or is it all more abstracted for you?  I just would like to be clear on where the handwavium is and maybe learn about some new cool propulsion concepts .

Turbines in front? Feel free to say that, but it's more like an abstraction of burning some fuel with the air at the low speed to get going (see: liquid fuel injection for scramjet combustion or Nitrous Oxide injection for cars). That's the handwavium. Running hotter and raising that break point? Yes. Actual scramjets? No. I would need to have a fresh talk with someone about if and how those can work. The internal geometry of a ramjet and scramjet may differ enough that it may be very difficult for a single engine part to be both.

Turbines definitely have no place in the intake of a scramjet. They have just too many parts and these parts will all cause too much interference in the air stream and will all need to be made to resist reentry levels of heat, which is impossible in practice or prohibitively costly or wasteful to finance.

As for propulsion concepts you may find the falling (pracitcally all-in-one) engine types quite interesting. Staying in atomics there is the Nuclear Thermal Turbo Rocket (NTTR) whose turbine blades have variable pitch and whose trailing edges are fuel injectors when needed and linear aerospikes when needed. Altogether it promises SSTO delivery with generous payload fractions. Outside of atomics, I often think of solutions to Rocket-based combined cycle (RBCC) or TBCC (T for turbine) engines. TBCC are all-range jet engines but can't also be rockets.

 

3 hours ago, kerbnub said:

Do you know if the RRNF configs play well with Nertea's SystemHeat? 

Sorry, they don't. I still don't play with System Heat yet.

[Manul]

6 hours ago, kerbnub said:

I also thought turbines would get in the way of a functional scramjet cycle.

Not only turbine but also a multistage compressor and a turbojet subsonic combustion (or heating) chamber. The easy way to prevent all this stuff from making lots of drag and melting above mach3 is to bypass air around the turbojet assembly in ramjet mode.

 

Maybe it's even possible to make a circular scramjet with a turbojet hidden inside but it doesn't make sense because scramjet requires mach 5-6 to operate and turbojet can hardly get to mach 3.  Building a ramjet around a turbojet makes more sense

The hard way is using a precooler and extreme compression ratios like a SABRE engine does. But it requires a really complex multi stage compressor with a final stage looking more like a rocket turbopump (and it also can pump liquid propellant in rocket mode). And this compressor requires an extra heating loop (helium loop for SABRE)  to spin the turbine because no turbine will survive being driven directly by the exhaust with such pressure and temperature.

KARE engines look like nuclear versions of SABRE rather than scramjets and they don't run above mach 9 like scramjets are supposed to do.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Manul

[Rakete]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I still don't play with System Heat yet

Tip: Give SH a try in your playthroughs. I think you'll enjoy it. Nerteas Mod compendium is one of the greatest additions to the gameplay. (Not saying, that other mods aren't as great, but really recommend them for your personal playthroughs)

[Rakete]

Addendum: SH is also much more stable than the stock heat system, that is really prone to weird effects and heat spikes under certain circumstances.

[JadeOfMaar]

28 minutes ago, Manul said:

KARE engines look like nuclear versions of SABRE rather than scramjets and they don't run above mach 9 like scramjets are supposed to do.

This. Very much.

21 minutes ago, Manul said:

Not only turbine but also a multistage compressor and a turbojet subsonic combustion (or heating) chamber. The easy way to prevent all this stuff from making lots of drag and melting above mach3 is to bypass air around the turbojet assembly in ramjet mode.

I've forgotten about all this. It's not too far from what my idea of the internals would actually be like. Being nuclear and not chemical, most or all of the turbojet section would be replaced by the heat exchanger subsystem(s).

22 minutes ago, Manul said:

make a circular scramjet

"Wrapper/Donut/Hollow" scramjet. I've done this for Sterling Systems, but I'd need to be convinced if and how an atomic version would work, and if folks would prefer that or a tilt-able thermal ducted fan and a 1.25m reactor to power it.

[Manul]

7 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Being nuclear and not chemical, most or all of the turbojet section would be replaced by the heat exchanger subsystem(s).

With a typical nuclear thermal jet looking like this:

I think the nuclear J58 can share heat exchangers between turbojet and ramjet parts

First heat exchanger is primary for turbojet and secondary for ramjet. A primary ramjet heat exchanger can be used like an afterburner (or afterheater) in turbojet mode because if the turbine is not in the way of the exhaust anymore, why not heat it once again as a chemical afterburner does.

[Manul]

On 12/23/2022 at 6:30 AM, Rakete said:

Under certain points of view the textures flicker and show stange beige color:

See here: Inner area of the intake:

KSP 1.12.3

 

 If you take this patch and this mod KARE intakes will look great. With B9AnimationModules they look even better because the shock cone moves depending on the airspeed. And when the intake is closed it moves al the way forward actually closing the intake.

@PART[kare_eng*]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDepthMask
		maskTransform = DepthMask
	}
}
@PART[kare_int*]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleDepthMask
		maskTransform = DepthMask
	}
}

 

[Nori]

I downloaded the zip for this and had a question. Opened a cfg and in closed mode it uses liquid fuel and appears to operate quite similar to the NERV. Have you thought about having it run (or have the possibility to run) on liquid hydrogen? NF modifies most atomics to run on LH so was just curious. 

[JadeOfMaar]

14 minutes ago, Nori said:

I downloaded the zip for this and had a question. Opened a cfg and in closed mode it uses liquid fuel and appears to operate quite similar to the NERV. Have you thought about having it run (or have the possibility to run) on liquid hydrogen? NF modifies most atomics to run on LH so was just curious. 

KARE is indeed (what if you took proven ANP tech and did a thing like Skylon's SABRE).

RR Nuclear Family provides propellant switching for KARE.

[Nori]

17 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

KARE is indeed (what if you took proven ANP tech and did a thing like Skylon's SABRE).

RR Nuclear Family provides propellant switching for KARE.

Awesome. Forgot about that one. Gonna go tinker in SPH for a bit as these looks pretty great and seem like they would go well with JNSQ.

[UltraJohn]

Hi!

I was wondering if it's possible to get a patch for WaterfallRestock/RestockWaterfallExpansion? Currently your Waterfall patch only applies to StockWaterfallEffects, which I don't use due to having restock.

Alternatively, is there a way I can convert the current patches to point to an equivalent Restock waterfall effect instead?

Thanks! 

Edit: It looks like RestockWaterfallExpansion bundles the same templates used in KARE from StockWaterfallEffects. It should be fairly safe to just rename:

:NEEDS[Waterfall,StockWaterfallEffects]

to

:NEEDS[Waterfall,RestockWaterfallExpansion]

Correct? (Or even better, make it check for either of them at the same time :NEEDS[Waterfall,StockWaterfallEffects|RestockWaterfallExpansion]? Don't know the exact syntax though)

Edited July 20, 2023 by UltraJohn

[JadeOfMaar]

12 hours ago, UltraJohn said:

Correct? (Or even better, make it check for either of them at the same time :NEEDS[Waterfall,StockWaterfallEffects|RestockWaterfallExpansion]? Don't know the exact syntax though)

This should be correct. I'll need you to confirm it yourself. I don't have access to KSP right now.

Spoiler

What software did you copy the text from that's in your code blocks? It's white and I'm not running dark mode right now. xD

 

[UltraJohn]

11 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Spoiler

What software did you copy the text from that's in your code blocks? It's white and I'm not running dark mode right now. xD

Oh haha I didn't even notice what you were talking about at first! Yeah I don't quite know what happened here. It looks normal to me, but I'm using a dark mode theme for KSP forum through an extension for Chrome called Stylus  

I suppose I somehow must have copied the formatting from dark mode, but yeah not sure!

EDIT: I think there was an update to the forum a few days ago that changed how some styling works. I think that's where it might have gone wrong, not the dark mode theme, hmm. Try making a code block with any type of syntax highlighting

test

 

Edited July 21, 2023 by UltraJohn

[JadeOfMaar]

On 7/20/2023 at 9:24 AM, UltraJohn said:

 :NEEDS[Waterfall,StockWaterfallEffects|RestockWaterfallExpansion]

Yo. Have you confirmed this in the meantime? I'd like to publish a release for this and the depthmask configs.

[UltraJohn]

34 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Yo. Have you confirmed this in the meantime? I'd like to publish a release for this and the depthmask configs.

Ah right right, I totally forgot to check! Yes it does look like it works

Middle engine has a nice effect, and the two outer ones are more of a faint shockwave effect. That should be correct?

Spoiler

[JadeOfMaar]

3 minutes ago, UltraJohn said:

Middle engine has a nice effect, and the two outer ones are more of a faint shockwave effect. That should be correct?

Sounds about right. The outer engine needs to have a subtle plume, not a bright and flashy one. (Should be what you would expect of the Panther in Dry mode)

If it has a plume, that's all that matters.