The Skyhawk Science System - a new, realistic tech tree for KSP, now including Kerbalism support - [v1.1.1 - "For Science!" 8/11/22)]

[CessnaSkyhawk]

21 hours ago, Friznit said:

The dev version on Github has a patch to fix the BDB contracts.

I've been using the tech tree in my latest career and enjoying it.  Generally it faces the same problem as any tech tree in that you can tend to unlock everything up to about Tier 7 very quickly with the local system science (and not trying very hard at that), then you hit a bit of a wall whilst interplanetary stuff slowly unlocks.  I'd prefer a steeper curve on the early nodes then flatten it out after Tier 6/7 - it would encourage use of early rockets more without causing excessive grind in the mid to late game.

I've had to manually patch in a few mods and updates, which thankfully is pretty straight forward to do, but the tree could really use a generic patch for adding unsupported mod parts to the nearest equivalent tech node.

I'm interested to hear your feedback - so basically you're finding that it's still to easy to breeze through the early game? 

I'm currently just starting work on the Kerbalism science patch for SSS, and I'm thinking that depending on how it is balanced, I will see about backporting a lot of its stuff back to the stock SSS system.

[Friznit]

Indeed.  I was running with 80% science rewards in KSRSS so only the moon to suck dry of science and no space station labs to optimise returns yet.  Admittedly with BDB and Dmagic Orbital Science there are a lot of experiments but I got every branch to tier 7 without much trouble.  I haven't had to use Atlas, Delta or Saturn rockets at all, skipped straight to Titan and now launching STS for the first time.

On the plus side I did have to make some strategic choices about what order to unlock things in, and did more science with planes and probes before crewed work than I normally would so it's definitely getting the progression about right

[Kwebib]

@CessnaSkyhawk perhaps consider using the celestial body science editor mod and provide a config to lower science multipliers for the planets, a la PBC or KTT, so you can't get 10,000 science from Kerbin's moons alone.

 

Edit: I see you're doing this with Kopernicus. Maybe they should be nerfed further?

Edited February 11, 2022 by Kwebib

[CessnaSkyhawk]

11 hours ago, Friznit said:

Indeed.  I was running with 80% science rewards in KSRSS so only the moon to suck dry of science and no space station labs to optimise returns yet.  Admittedly with BDB and Dmagic Orbital Science there are a lot of experiments but I got every branch to tier 7 without much trouble.  I haven't had to use Atlas, Delta or Saturn rockets at all, skipped straight to Titan and now launching STS for the first time.

On the plus side I did have to make some strategic choices about what order to unlock things in, and did more science with planes and probes before crewed work than I normally would so it's definitely getting the progression about right

 

8 hours ago, Kwebib said:

@CessnaSkyhawk perhaps consider using the celestial body science editor mod and provide a config to lower science multipliers for the planets, a la PBC or KTT, so you can't get 10,000 science from Kerbin's moons alone.

 

Edit: I see you're doing this with Kopernicus. Maybe they should be nerfed further?

Alright - I think I know what the issue is - I buffed a decent amount of science experiments to give a lot more data as I was concerned that there wouldn't be enough science, but never really playtested it as I went direct to Kerbalism support. I'm thinking that I'll halve or third most of the science values for the experiments to bring them closer to their stock values.

[Red Dwarf]

I've honestly found the pace of science unlocks pretty reasonable. That being said, I am running full near future/far future, also I have unlock costs on as well.

[CessnaSkyhawk]

Hi Everyone! I've been continuing to chug along with the kerbalism update. About halfway through the science rework now (which will also come with some changes to the stock tree too!)

Here are a few spoilers of some of the new experiments you can expect. They are organized into groups, and on parts which are assigned to a given group, you will be able to chose between each of the experiments, which will all have differing requirements, timescales, and values. (Aside from Free Agents, which are just those which don't have a group to go in). Some of these have some really interesting requirements, and will have you scratching your head on how to figure them out. But don't worry, you'll be amply rewarded if you do! 

Unmanned Experiments:

Crewed Experiments:

Edited February 19, 2022 by CessnaSkyhawk

[MoeKitsune]

That looks amazing! Will there be descriptions in-game for where you can do these or in what orbits?

[CessnaSkyhawk]

14 hours ago, MoeKitsune said:

That looks amazing! Will there be descriptions in-game for where you can do these or in what orbits?

Of course! Kerbalism is actually really nice when it comes to specifying all the restrictions/requirements.

[JebTheDestroyer]

I've noticed that in my game the Vector engine has been renamed to the S3 KS-25K "Rainstorm" Kerosene Engine. Is it this mod that's causing this, and if not, does anyone know what mod is?

[CessnaSkyhawk]

4 hours ago, JebTheDestroyer said:

I've noticed that in my game the Vector engine has been renamed to the S3 KS-25K "Rainstorm" Kerosene Engine. Is it this mod that's causing this, and if not, does anyone know what mod is?

Yes, that is intentional. When ReDirect is installed, which has a duplicate vector engine, SSS renames them both to custom names, Snowstorm for the LH2 version, and Rainstorm for the Kerosene version.

[JebTheDestroyer]

is there any way to undo it? I use a patch to turn the stock Vector into a cryo engine, and would prefer if the name matched that. I tried looking through the reDIRECT patch, but no luck.

[CessnaSkyhawk]

Delete the following the the Squad.cfg file

@PART[SSME]:AFTER[Squad]:NEEDS[reDIRECT] //
{
	@title = S3 KS-25K "Rainstorm" Kerosene Engine 
	@TechRequired = kerolox8
}

 

[JebTheDestroyer]

On 2/23/2022 at 10:33 AM, CessnaSkyhawk said:

Delete the following the the Squad.cfg file

@PART[SSME]:AFTER[Squad]:NEEDS[reDIRECT] //
{
	@title = S3 KS-25K "Rainstorm" Kerosene Engine 
	@TechRequired = kerolox8
}

 

Thanks! Looking forward to the new release!

[CessnaSkyhawk]

Figured I'd give another update - I've been a bit burned out from KSP modding for the past week or so, and have been playing other games instead to change it up. The Kerbalism update has become a bigger project than expecting as I'm now doing a full-blown science overhaul. I'm planning to take a look at it again later this week, so if all goes well, it'll be out some time in the next two weeks, once I'm back in the mood to mod again

[CessnaSkyhawk]

Finally broke some ground on wrapping up Skyhawk Kerbalism science. 

Here's the first patched experiment set. They are also tech restricted, but I forgot to put that line in the MM patch.

 

EDIT: Also found some typos just now. That's what I get for writing these up at like 2 am.  

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by CessnaSkyhawk

[Garuda]

Would you consider adding support for the US probes pack? Its the only option out there for a fair number of spacecraft 

[CessnaSkyhawk]

19 hours ago, Garuda said:

Would you consider adding support for the US probes pack? Its the only option out there for a fair number of spacecraft 

At this point I'm mostly done with adding new support patches, at least for the time being. I'm always open to pull requests though!

[jaunco325]

I have a little question: if I install a mod that adds new parts to unlock. and this mod is not prepared to support that other mod. what would happen to those pieces? How much can the game be ruined?

 

[Garuda]

Is mechjeb reduced to it's bare basic functions without autopilot in this? I'm 50%~ of the way through the tech tree and I still don't have smartass or ascent guidance. 

[CessnaSkyhawk]

3 hours ago, Garuda said:

Is mechjeb reduced to it's bare basic functions without autopilot in this? I'm 50%~ of the way through the tech tree and I still don't have smartass or ascent guidance. 

It is pretty heavily nerfed, but it shouldn't be that bad. Try adding in this patch:

Quote

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[MechJebCore],!MODULE[KerbalEVA]]:AFTER[MechJeb*]
{
  %MODULE[MechJebCore]
  {
    %MechJebLocalSettings
    {
      %MechJebModuleCustomWindowEditor { %unlockTechs = control3 }
      %MechJebModuleSmartASS { %unlockTechs = control3 }
      %MechJebModuleManeuverPlanner { %unlockTechs = control7 }
      %MechJebModuleNodeEditor { %unlockTechs = start }
      %MechJebModuleTranslatron { %unlockTechs = control7 }
      %MechJebModuleWarpHelper { %unlockTechs = control7 }
      %MechJebModuleAttitudeAdjustment { %unlockTechs = control7 }
      %MechJebModuleThrustWindow { %unlockTechs = control7 }
      %MechJebModuleRCSBalancerWindow { %unlockTechs = control7 }
      %MechJebModuleRoverWindow { %unlockTechs = robotics8 }
      %MechJebModuleAscentGuidance { %unlockTechs = control5 }
      %MechJebModuleLandingGuidance { %unlockTechs = control5 }
      %MechJebModuleSpaceplaneGuidance { %unlockTechs = control5 }
      %MechJebModuleDockingGuidance { %unlockTechs = control9 }
      %MechJebModuleRendezvousAutopilotWindow { %unlockTechs = control9 }
      %MechJebModuleRendezvousGuidance { %unlockTechs = control9 }
    }
  }

}

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by CessnaSkyhawk

[Garuda]

11 hours ago, CessnaSkyhawk said:

It is pretty heavily nerfed, but it shouldn't be that bad. Try adding in this patch:

 

Added that in to the mechjeb section and nothing's changed. 

5 minutes ago, Garuda said:

Added that in to the mechjeb section and nothing's changed. 

Autostrut/advanced tweakables fail to show up too, despite having them enabled 

[Redleg1]

2 hours ago, Garuda said:

Added that in to the mechjeb section and nothing's changed. 

Autostrut/advanced tweakables fail to show up too, despite having them enabled 

I'm not sure if it is the case here, but in other techtrees I have used like Kiwi Techtree and an edited version of the tree from Less Than Real Realism (LRTR), nothing seemed to be able to change the technode unlocks for Mechjeb. I even tried editing the technode unlock in the Mechjeb CFG and it still did not change where the mechjeb modules were in the tree.

[Garuda]

How do I actually go about writing a patch to add in parts to the tree? 

[Occam99]

Having a great time with this so far.

Have lodged a pull request with configs for TAC Life Support parts. Not sure if any part of your mod makes changes the resource converters or background resource calculations that TAC uses, so I have just made sure that all the parts have a place on the tech tree.

[CessnaSkyhawk]

Don't worry - I'm still alive! I've been a bit burnt out, but have slowly made progress on the Kerbalism update. Kerbalism science support is nearly done, and then it's just the mod support patches, which should be pretty quick once I get going on them. I promise it'll be out soon