[1.12.x] (Kopernicus) QuackPack v1.3.0 - An inner system expansion

[dave1904]

Know I know how the Soviets felt after venus.....

[Great Liao]

@Lt_Duckweed Nice Update!

[sirOrange17]

Will there be support for rational resources?

[Jcklemme]

What a fantastic pack, I can't believe I only just found it.  This is amazing work for a first planet pack, and it fills in a gap no other planet pack I use has filled.

[RamieusTitan]

I honestly love this mod, thank you for the great planets!!

 

I do have a question about Cind tho. I really like the style and vibe but I want to know if it’s possible to make the “lava lake” look more lava-ey. Is it a simple case of just editing the texture file myself? 

[Lt_Duckweed]

10 hours ago, RamieusTitan said:

I want to know if it’s possible to make the “lava lake” look more lava-ey. Is it a simple case of just editing the texture file myself? 

It should be possible I think.  For more lava-ey lava from far away you will want to edit

CindOcean in GameData\QuackPack\textures\pluginData

CindEmissiveDetail in GameData\QuackPack\EVE\Textures

When actually sitting on the ground near an ocean, there are issues with z-fighting between the emissive texture and the regular ocean texture I never really figured out how to resolve, but to make the ocean texture look better while sitting close to it you will have to change the Cind config to replace the default "water" textures with brand new textures (currently it uses build in KSP textures), which will be more difficult.

 

When I next get around to updating QuackPack, better Cind lava is pretty high on the list.

[Lt_Duckweed]

QuackPack v1.2.0 Dead Worlds

Changelog

• Dependencies

  • KopernicusExpansionContinued-er dependency removed

  • VertexColorMapEmissive added as bundled dependency

  • VertexHeightOblateAdvanced added as bundled dependency 

• Blas

  • Dimmer, more transparent rings

  • Redone, less saturated colormap

  • Add height noise for more varied, bumpy terrain

  • Add terrain scatters

  • Tweaked, less saturated Scatterer atmosphere

  • Stock atmosphere redone, will look nicer when playing without Scatterer

• Jot

  • Tweak Scatterer atmosphere slightly

  • Stock atmosphere redone, will look nicer when playing without Scatterer

• Subon

  • Use VertexHeightOblateAdvanced instead of oblate heightmap

  • Updated normalmap

  • Add terrain scatters

• Cind

  • Scatter atmosphere redone, now purple to represent the high concentrations of disulfur gas

  • Stock atmosphere redone, will look nicer when playing without Scatterer

  • Add height noise for more varied, bumpy terrain

  • Add terrain scatters

  • Ocean texture redone, now looks more like lava and less like orange juice

  • All emissive effects redone, using VertexColorMapEmissive

Download

• Github

• SpaceDock

Licensing

• QuackPack is licensed by Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Edited March 2 by Lt_Duckweed

[Iapetus7342]

Ah neat, my hellworlds will look much better now!

[Infinite Aerospace]

Might I first add that this is a sweet addition to a stock system. Can you actually land on Cind? It seems insanely close to Kerbol.

[Lt_Duckweed]

9 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Might I first add that this is a sweet addition to a stock system. Can you actually land on Cind? It seems insanely close to Kerbol.

It is very difficult to safely reach and land on Cind, but it is just far enough from Kerbol that with very judicious part selection it is possible to stay within thermal limits and pull off a landing.

Here is an example of a successful mission pulled off by @JeDoesStuff

 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I was having issues with the Kopernicus-er. I wanna check this out now. Thanks for the update.

[J-B]

The orbits of Geet and Subon are not stable with Principia. I don’t know if a stable orbit exists, in the meantime you can delete them like so:

@Kopernicus:AFTER[QuackPack]:NEEDS[Principia]
{
        -Body[Geet] {}
        -Body[Subon] {}
}

The orbits of the three planets are stable (tested to 600 years).

Edited July 18, 2024 by J-B

[Lt_Duckweed]

1 hour ago, J-B said:

The orbits of Geet and Subon are not stable with Principia. I don’t know if a stable orbit exists, in the meantime you can delete them like so:

@Kopernicus:AFTER[QuackPack]:NEEDS[Principia]
{
        -Body[Geet] {}
        -Body[Subon] {}
}

The orbits of the three planets are stable (tested to 600 years).

Yeah with how close the three planets are to Kerbol and to each other, I doubt any orbit for any moons could ever be stable around any of the three.  The existence of Geet and Subon are ultimately concessions that deviate from realism for gameplay purposes.

Subon exists because otherwise Jot can feel empty and a bit pointless, and to serve as a staging ground for inner system infrastructure.

Geet exists to ease the delta-v challenge of leaving Blas, via ISRU (for those who chose to do so).

 

Out of curiosity, what happens to Geet and Subon?  I assume Geet is ejected, does Subon also get ejected or does it collide with Jot?

Edited July 18, 2024 by Lt_Duckweed

[J-B]

In my testing, Geet appeared to remain in a highly irregular orbit around Blas, with Principia throwing an “apocalypse” error indicating the accelerations are too extreme for it to properly model (likely implying a collision would occur). When I tested with 1.25x and 0.8x SMA, it was instead immediately ejected.

I didn’t test Subon as thoroughly; it remains in stable orbit for longer than Geet does but otherwise seems to behave similarly.

 

 

[Infinite Aerospace]

Since I can't think of why this wouldn't work, is there any reason anyone can think of as to why Jot is a very dark grey object when orbiting Ciro (GPP, still named 'Sun' as far as the game is concerned), I can't see a reason why this would be the case in any of the configs. Am I missing something? This was installed via CKAN.

[Lt_Duckweed]

QuackPack v1.3.0 Jot Gets Hot

Changelog

• Jot

  • New texture and normals

  • New cloud textures

  • New emissive effects added, using VertexColorMapEmissive

  • Full support for EVE Volumetrics added (Github release only)

• Subon

  • Surface brightness massively increased

Installation

• Remove any prexisting QuackPack installations (QuackPack folder within GameData folder in KSP directory)

• Install ALL listed dependencies, following the links bellow

• Download and extract the QuackPack zip file

• Place the GameData folder into your KSP directory

• OPTIONAL (Github release only)

  • Download and extract the Volumetrics zip file

  • Place the GameData folder into your KSP directory

Download

• Github

• CKAN

Gallery

Licensing

• QuackPack is licensed by Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Edited March 2 by Lt_Duckweed

[modus]

Oh my! Very nice!

[Iapetus7342]

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!

[Infinite Aerospace]

8 hours ago, Lt_Duckweed said:

QuackPack v1.3.0 Jot Gets Hot

Changelog

• Jot

  • New texture and normals

  • New cloud textures

  • New emissive effects added, using VertexColorMapEmissive

  • Full support for EVE Volumetrics added (Github release only)

• Subon

  • Surface brightness massively increased

Installation

• Remove any prexisting QuackPack installations (QuackPack folder within GameData folder in KSP directory)

• Install ALL listed dependencies, following the links bellow

• Download and extract the QuackPack zip file

• Place the GameData folder into your KSP directory

• OPTIONAL (Github release only)

  • Download and extract the Volumetrics zip file

  • Place the GameData folder into your KSP directory

Download

• Github

• SpaceDock

Gallery

Licensing

• QuackPack is licensed by Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Looks epic, great to see this getting updated. It's a wicked little mod, though, is it actually possible to land on Cind? It looks mind bogglingly close to Kerbol. 

[Lt_Duckweed]

4 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Looks epic, great to see this getting updated. It's a wicked little mod, though, is it actually possible to land on Cind? It looks mind bogglingly close to Kerbol. 

It's possible, but very difficult, for two reasons:

1. Equilibrium temps in orbit very often (deppending on craft design) get high enough to destroy some of the weaker parts (IE, parts with 800k-1200k temp tolerance).  Anything with a tolerance of 2000k or higher should be totally fine, as even peak dayside temps max out around 1800k. That in between range of 1200k-1800k is where craft design is most relevant, as careful use of radiators, strategic use of parts to shield from solar heating, etc can push temps low enough to open up part selection a bit.
2. Getting to Cind is very, very delta-v intensive.  Even making use of assists off of Jot, you will need around 4km/s just to capture at Cind (totally ignoring the pile of delta-v needed to reach the inner system in the first place).  It is possible to reduce this further using V-infinity leveraging manuvers (often also referred to as Messenger assists).
   1. The basic idea here is chaining multiple flybys of Cind, with deep space maneuvers in between.
   2. Each time you flyby, your orbit gets bent slightly radial in/out, which reduces your Kerbolar periapsis and apoapsis a little bit.
   3. At/close to Kerbolar periapsis, you perform a small burn to raise your periapsis a little, and encounter Cind on a nice tangent trajectory again in a few orbits.
   4. The long and short of it is that in the majority of circumstances this reduces your relative velocity to Cind (and this is generalizable to any body) by an amount several times greater than if you spent that same amount of dv slowing down at the periapsis of your Cind flyby.
   5. This can slash the capture cost of 4km/s at least in half, probably more, but because your relative velocity to Cind is so high, it can't bend your trajectory very much on each flyby, so it takes a LOT of flybys, which costs a significant amount of both real and ingame time.

All that said, Cind has been reached with stock parts by a number of folks, and even with an SSTO, the video for which is posted upthread.

Edited March 2 by Lt_Duckweed

[Spanghzcome]

On 3/2/2025 at 2:23 PM, Lt_Duckweed said:

It's possible, but very difficult, for two reasons:

1. Equilibrium temps in orbit very often (deppending on craft design) get high enough to destroy some of the weaker parts (IE, parts with 800k-1200k temp tolerance).  Anything with a tolerance of 2000k or higher should be totally fine, as even peak dayside temps max out around 1800k. That in between range of 1200k-1800k is where craft design is most relevant, as careful use of radiators, strategic use of parts to shield from solar heating, etc can push temps low enough to open up part selection a bit.
2. Getting to Cind is very, very delta-v intensive.  Even making use of assists off of Jot, you will need around 4km/s just to capture at Cind (totally ignoring the pile of delta-v needed to reach the inner system in the first place).  It is possible to reduce this further using V-infinity leveraging manuvers (often also referred to as Messenger assists).
   1. The basic idea here is chaining multiple flybys of Cind, with deep space maneuvers in between.
   2. Each time you flyby, your orbit gets bent slightly radial in/out, which reduces your Kerbolar periapsis and apoapsis a little bit.
   3. At/close to Kerbolar periapsis, you perform a small burn to raise your periapsis a little, and encounter Cind on a nice tangent trajectory again in a few orbits.
   4. The long and short of it is that in the majority of circumstances this reduces your relative velocity to Cind (and this is generalizable to any body) by an amount several times greater than if you spent that same amount of dv slowing down at the periapsis of your Cind flyby.
   5. This can slash the capture cost of 4km/s at least in half, probably more, but because your relative velocity to Cind is so high, it can't bend your trajectory very much on each flyby, so it takes a LOT of flybys, which costs a significant amount of both real and ingame time.

All that said, Cind has been reached with stock parts by a number of folks, and even with an SSTO, the video for which is posted upthread.

How can you keep less heat-resistant parts (such as science experiments and all manned command pods) from overheating during time warps higher than 100x at around Cind's orbit? At 1x-100x, these are fine if they are protected by cargo bays, fairings, heat shields, and/or radiators, but any faster than that destroys them nearly immediately, and at 100x time warp, it takes more than 7-8 real-time minutes to do a single orbit, so messenger assists seem impractical and insanely  tedious in this case.

Also, step 3 says that I should increase my Kerbolar periapsis at or near the Kerbolar periapsis; do you actually mean I should perform the burn at or near the Kerbolar apoapsis?

[Infinite Aerospace]

Jot looks absolutely fantastic now BTW. The clouds are amazing. 

[Lt_Duckweed]

On 3/6/2025 at 1:21 PM, Spanghzcome said:

Also, step 3 says that I should increase my Kerbolar periapsis at or near the Kerbolar periapsis; do you actually mean I should perform the burn at or near the Kerbolar apoapsis?

Oops, I meant burn at periapsis to raise apoapsis.

On 3/6/2025 at 1:21 PM, Spanghzcome said:

How can you keep less heat-resistant parts (such as science experiments and all manned command pods) from overheating during time warps higher than 100x at around Cind's orbit? At 1x-100x, these are fine if they are protected by cargo bays, fairings, heat shields, and/or radiators, but any faster than that destroys them nearly immediately, and at 100x time warp, it takes more than 7-8 real-time minutes to do a single orbit, so messenger assists seem impractical and insanely  tedious in this case.

Basically, at higher than 100x timewarp, any heat flux kind of gets smeared over the whole craft, and conduction is no longer calculated.
However, solar heating is still computed via the area exposed to Kerbol.  The way to survive at higher warps like this is to make a craft that presents a narrow enough profile to Kerbol, with enough surface area behind, so that it can radiate the heat away while staying under the temp limit you are targeting (for example, 1200k for science experiments).

Alternatively, it's possible to change the point at which KSP swaps between the two variants of thermal computation, by changing the thermalMaxIntegrationWarp key in the physics.cfg file.