[Released] Linbol System Rebirth - Prerelease Thread

[RevanX_LSR]

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release thread

Currently, there are few planet packs of the large scale being developed. This modpack aims to change that by introducing a new modpack that when completed will be the largest out there. However, this is obviously very very ambitious and will take place over a year or so.  All the bodies have been planned and are pending the PQS and Heightmap/Color/Normal files. All planets, stars and moons are scaled to 2.67x scale to complement JNSQ and a very small handful of bodies are actually quite similar to those in GPP in nature.

You spawn in Revan (provisional name, named after the title that i released this mod pack in), a super-kerbin (you could even say it’s a super nodens due to its similar buffing in stats), with a gravity, radius and pressure ASL 38%,30% and 190% greater than JNSQ kerbin (another mod pack of the same scale). This makes atmospheric flight easier (at least for large and less draggy craft), due to the firmer grip and better handling. Orbital speeds are so high that SSTOs are infeasible (combined with increased scale), and re-entry is deadly without heat shield- all for a more complex and difficult experience as well as the usage of multi stage launchers.

 

A glider gliding above the surface of Heyu, pre-texture update, a tidally heated moon, with its massive gas giant and its rings shown. This was the logo of LSR.

 

Current Version/Release Date:

Spoiler

Release: v0.2.0

Currently working on EVE and scatterer config for the atmospheric bodies, probably will take a while

Key: First digit: Star system it is orbiting. Second+third digit:planet number of planet number of the parent from the host star. Fourth and fifth digit: Moon number from the parent. Last digit: Sub-moon order from the host moon. This is only 0 or 1 and there are no such examples in the 24 flagship bodies listed ahead.

Most of the objects are pending naming (don't ask why) and we need your help to name them (over on discord).

24 Flagship Bodies:

Linbol AA - F7V main sequence star slightly larger than Kerbol. Posesses metallicity comparable to Kerbol.

Linbol AB - M3V  main sequence star a third the size of Kerbol and fairly calm for its size.

101000 - a barren and scorched planet orbiting its host stars every two weeks.

102000 - a volcanic planet smaller than the earth with rivers of flowing magma.

103000 - a kerbin-sized desert planet with its characteristic yellow-orange tint.

104000 - a kerbin-sized habitable planet with a small set of rings and oceans.

105000 - the homeworld and also a habitable super-earth with oceans.

105030 - the furthest moon of 105000 that contains a thin atmosphere and deep canyons. (pending the unoriginal name Canyon from LS1)

106000 - a barren and inhospitable mega-earth 15 times the mass of 104000.

106020 - the much more habitable but still cold moon of 106000.

The asteroid belt where future minor planets will be added.

109000 - a relatively small white water-cloud gas giant.

109030 - the tidally heated orange desert moon 20% the mass of 103000.

110000 - the largest gas giant with a large set of rings and 14 planned moons.

110060 - an dark blue ice giant moon or potential binary, the only of its kind (in this mod).

110070 - the largest moon in the system by far and possesses a toxic purple atmosphere like eve.

111000 - a pale blue gas giant a third the mass of 110000 with a smaller set of rings.

111010 - a tidally heated icy-carbonaceous moon with oceans. (This is the flagship moon of the system and is pending the name Heyu (named after the highest peak in the homeworld 105000 where it was first observed by astronomers).

112000 - a medium-sized ice giant known for its insane winds at the cloud layer.

112010 - a large ice world with a vast underground ocean over 49 kilometers deep.

114000 - a frozen ice-world with ancient lakes, cryovolcanism and 5+ kilometer spires.

115000 - a mysterious mega-earth in a distant and eccentric orbit with a dense and deadly atmosphere.

115010 - the tidally heated (but still frozen) dark moon of 115000.

Linbol BA - K5V or K4V main sequence star slightly smaller than Kerbol.

Linbol BB - DA3.5 white dwarf that used to be a star twice the mass of Kerbol just 100 million years ago.

There are many more bodies planned but these are the 24 bodies that will be in the initial release.

Currently work in progress are those in bold.

Those italicised are complete and will be released.

(The only really earth like bodies are 104000 and 105000).

Linbol system's 24 flagship bodies are unique in their own way such as posessing a thick atmosphere and so on, and must meet the mass and radius requirements given by me. (all bodies are larger than Stock Kerbin and are at least 4% the mass of JNSQ Kerbin). The increased scale and (comparatively) large size of the homeworld (which is twice the mass of JNSQ Kerbin) makes take-offs and launches slightly harder as well as orbiting (SSTOs are probably impossible).

The four gas planets (one with a gas moon) orbit in a roughly 3:5:8:12 pattern of Semi major axes, compared to OPM/RSS 1:2:4:6. This results in a much closer gas giant configuration and also a slightly unstable one over the course of billions of years. The furthest-out gas planet orbits roughly where Sarnus would be if the system was shrunked down to stock scale and the star down to stock size. That being said, the planet pack makes up for this by implementing three new bodies further out that orbit all the way out to where Eeloo would be in JNSQ (or roughly where Urlum is). All this is done to reduce ludicrous travel times and to prevent the need for the JX2 antenna or Better Time Warp.

The textures used in this modpack vary in size by body, but as a general rule of thumb:

8192 size textures are used for large solid bodies and gas giants. (>1500km radii)

4096 size textures are used for mid sized (500-1500km radii) bodies

2048 size textures are used for small sized (<500km radii) bodies

This ensures textures are finely detailed for large bodies, and the final modpack with all 119 bodies will probably end up being larger than JNSQ and comparable to the Alpharia planet pack, at 2.2 gigabytes. 

Mods recommended:

JX2 Antenna - a large expensive and heavy antenna but with extreme network capabilities recommended for Deep Space communication. Extremely useful past 109000.

Visual Mods - only if your PC can run it

Better Time Warp - Used to speed up time - some of the outer planets are a little bit far away.

Hangar Extender - In case you need to make larger rockets. Just in general

Eve optimised Engines - For 106000 and 109070.

Distant object enhancement - to see distant objects more clearly.

Not really counts as a Mod, but also change your difficulty settings to multiply DSN modifier by 4 to make up for the large system and larger scale. Also, custom lighting should be used, everything Heyu and beyond is just really really dark.

The poles are also quite distorted in some bodies, so some gas giants have a hazardous magnetic field strong at the poles to deter Kerbals from looking at the poles up close (although this effect is most pronounced on terrestrial bodies)

Difficulty:

While LSR may be a hard mod, it isn’t as difficult as it seems as Stock engines are generally slightly overpowered for stock scale. Apart from the notably thick atmosphere (which thins rapidly and can be easily avoided), the homeworld body does not pose any challenges apart from the large size and gravity. Overall all players except the most beginner players should be able to play this mod.

Screenshots

Spoiler

The homeworld KSC.

Canyon

Vera

Perbi

Heyu

See you soon!

Edited August 31, 2023 by RevanX_LSR
good night

[RevanX_LSR]

Progress for the Day:

Heyu - Colormap, Heightmap and Normals completed! This one was particularly easy to do, due to the reduced image size.

86% of the surface is covered in Water. 13.6% of the surface is normal land with sharp cliffs dropping off from all the islands and 0.4% are the high mountains with lots of rare resources. The surface is a peril to landing craft due to the ocean presence and the hills that scatter over 99% of the land area (the hills are not very high or steep thankfully). The highest peak is about 12 kilometers high, while the average land altitude is over 4 kilometers high. The ludicrous erosion rate is due to the extreme waves caused by massive tidal forces.

Edited July 11, 2023 by JNSQFan

[RevanX_LSR]

Progress for the day:

Making 104000. Please suggest names. (I will only be showing the in-game images this weekend due to commitments such as school). The surface will be similar to 105000 but with more continents. There are a few impact craters (point them out if you can once photo drop is out)

Spoiler

111000's gas giant texture. It turned out way bluer and darker blue than I expected.

Also i am making the Gas Planets. The goal is to make them as realistic and as detailed as possible, and they even have a normalmap.

Changed 105000's terrain slightly - the lowlands are closer to the sea and the mountains are higher and steeper.

Finally, the homeworld KSC's location has been decided. It's located very near the shore on the Equator, but it needs testing since it will probably be on a slope. It is twice the size of normal KSC in order to make way for larger rockets and planes. Bigger is ALWAYS  better in KSP!

Edited July 12, 2023 by JNSQFan

[RevanX_LSR]

Progress for the Day:

112000's Gas Planet textures. All the gas planets have a normal map equivalent to over 20 kilometers in altitude, in order to simulate the altitude difference in the various Clouds. As promised I think this does a good job at being similar (but not copyrightable) to Gauss of GPP which this planet was based on, and the surface is of the same color gradient all around with exceptions at the great blue storm near the center of the picture, which will actually turn out in the northern hemisphere.

With that down, we only have the small ice giant and the two white-ish gas giants. (109000 is a water cloud gas giant, giving rise to its unprecedentedly high albedo, and 111000 also has a high concentration of substances that make it appear bluish. I find those colors for the gas giant the easiest and most realistic)

Edited July 13, 2023 by JNSQFan

[Watermel00n]

As they always say, no pics, no clicks

[RevanX_LSR]

yeah photo dump is coming quite soon

[mintymimus]

How do you feel about a tundra world with an ocean strip and barely habitable equatorial zone? Or a sub-habitable desert world with a scorching equatorial zone and a temperate polar region?

I feel these genres are a bit lacking in the oxygenated worlds among current planet-pack literature, which is dominated by temperate, exotic, and ocean worlds. 

 

[RevanX_LSR]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll probably add that into Linbol B system.

10 hours ago, mintymimus said:

How do you feel about a tundra world with an ocean strip and barely habitable equatorial zone? Or a sub-habitable desert world with a scorching equatorial zone and a temperate polar region?

I feel these genres are a bit lacking in the oxygenated worlds among current planet-pack literature, which is dominated by temperate, exotic, and ocean worlds. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll probably add that into Linbol B system.

sorry for the duped msg lol

103000 is a good example of the latter, as well

[RevanX_LSR]

Progress For The Day:

This kinda should be Progress of the day, but does anyone care?

104000 Configs are out. The terrain is quite ugly, but similar to Kerbin. (by ugly i mean the color scheme is off). Obviously i'm not going to show it here.

 

111000's color was changed to look better as well.  l also finished the coloring for all four stars as well as the CFG

 

110000's surface comprises of many bands of brown, yellowish and white, with 2 major storms 5300 and 10000km accross respectively. There many cloud bands accross the surface. (sorry for both misspellings of the word across)

Edited July 14, 2023 by JNSQFan

[Watermel00n]

The radiation fields impact gameplay in a larger way than if you let people see the poles. I dont think it's a good idea. 

[RevanX_LSR]

The fields of radiation only exist near datum level in very extreme conditions. Unless you fly less than 200 kilometers at high latitudes it shd be fine

The current version that I privately sent to you had bugged radiation lobes that do not work and do not affect gameplay. Release will have un-bugged lobes and nerfed effects.

[RevanX_LSR]

I'm still going to do it for ONE of the bodies. 112000. It adds to the lore that the magnetic field near poles are deadly and destroy ships that pass as close as three thousand kilometers over the surface. It was planned like that.

Venturing deep into the atmosphere is another great way to end your journey, the immense heating deep in the clouds adds realism (like how it is done in the real world) and also to prevent excessive use of aerocapture in case heat shields were able to protect you and encourage gravity assists instead - there are plenty of bodies with close orbiting major moons like Heyu and more to come

[RevanX_LSR]

kopernicus was unable to load the custom planetary system. i love my life.

delays in first release will probably happen

currently troubleshooting

Edited July 15, 2023 by JNSQFan

[RevanX_LSR]

Massive Announcement

LSR has been tested for the first time and images will be returned very soon! Note that the release will only be coming soon, as the terrain still has problems. Still a huge step, this is my first functioning planet pack and my first group of solid bodies i made.

 

Body Changes:

Heyu

Heyu now orbits slightly further away from its parent. terrain also steeper.

Edited July 15, 2023 by JNSQFan

[RevanX_LSR]

Oversight:

I noticed that some of the inner moons of some gas giants orbit really close to the parent. Working on fixing that. Currently only the upper atmosphere is bugged, and the surface is slightly weird.

[RevanX_LSR]

First Ever Photo Drop

Note: Due to a PQS skill issue, there was some problems in the terrain, resulting in rectangular terrain heights. Don't worry, it's fixed now.

A small plane on the flat lands near the homeworld's highest peak (Mount Heyu)

The massive, 18468 meter peak up close. (this is 60 kilometers away, by the way)

A small craft in the upper atmosphere. Issues rendering the KSC surfaced, it has been fixed, but it's at the tip of that small peninula.

Altitude: 25km | Speed: 750m/s

Unfortunately with the GUI on, this other spacecraft (same design but successful) managed to reach orbit before coming down in a hot fiery mess at five km/s.

Taken from 15 kilometers up, this shows a Plane taking off the steep slopes of Mount Heyu.

more planet photos coming soon

[RevanX_LSR]

Bug fix incoming:

Fixing kerbin’s blockiness: separate configs for kerbin’s normal terrain, mountains and mount heyu (the sacred peak shown post before this) to allow for more values taken by the heightmap and thus reducing blockiness

[RevanX_LSR]

Bugfix

Fixed Revan's blockiness at least close-up.

Better looking mountains now. They come in small patches and are very high, sometimes rivalling mount Heyu.

Fixed the unusual red color light coming from Linbol Ab.

In compensation for the increase in distance of Heyu (the moon) from its gas Giant, the eccentricity has also been bumped up to increase tidal heating.

Edited July 16, 2023 by JNSQFan

[RevanX_LSR]

there's still some bugs like an atmosphere visual problem and other stuff. It's better to have a working but later release than a buggy early release. Anyway, progress is already very fast for a planet pack.

[RevanX_LSR]

PLANET OF THE DAY

Heyu

Every day we will be showcasing one planet (if there is no 'progress for the day'). Note: the 'planet' may also be a moon, and i'm putting the images in a spoiler just in case you want to see the planets up close.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Heyu is a tidally locked and tidally heated moon in an exceptionally near orbit to gas planet 111000 (unnamed). Its relatively high eccentricity heats the planet up to a temperature that can support liquid water. It was thought that Heyu’s orbit was once more circular, although a Canyon sized body passed close to it (likely an interplanetary object) and disrupted its orbit in just the right way to make most of the ice to melt. The temperature is a global 286K and the planet will circularise its orbit over the next billions of years, but for now, it is an ocean world with a nitrogen atmosphere and a particularly dense ocean. The atmosphere contains no oxygen, making jets inoperable, but the low gravity and medium radius (albeit very large for a moon) makes nerv engines operable, and atmospheric flight is still possible with the 0.4 atmospheres of pressure. EVA thrusters are inoperable without the help of jumping.

Overall, this planet shows a striking similarity to Hadrian of GPP as it is partially based off it, but Heyu is overall darker, much closer to its parent, almost twice as large as the former and without the great cliffs. Land still meets the water at a sharp angle.

Landing on Heyu is easy and a NERV powered plane is recommended due to the low gravity and relatively thick and dense atmosphere (denser than Kerbin’s). Make sure to orbit in the direction of its rotation, as Heyu has extreme spin caused by the 5 hour days from tidal locking. Make a steep ascent trajectory when ascending.

Spoiler

I just fixed the rings of the Gas Giant 111000, and I must say it looks amazing.

 

Spoiler

The same glider "taxiing" on the surface using gravity as a source of energy.

 

Spoiler

The glider now closer to the surface. The altitude is 1,200 meters above sea level. There is a steep slope into the water, but terrain near the oceans has a slight coloring issue. There is also a issue with some water tiling while flying above surface.

Edited July 17, 2023 by JNSQFan

[RevanX_LSR]

I just realised that in the last two photos Heyu’s curvature is visible. This disproves the flat earth society and it shows how even at a low altitude the curvature of a planet nearly as big as Kerbin rescaled 2.67 times is still visible. Just a fun thing to point out.

[RevanX_LSR]

Screenshot from Watermel00n. This shows the new updated mountains of Revan.

[Watermel00n]

Crashed on the side of a mountain during playtesting...

[RevanX_LSR]

 

Please ignore the previous message im just taking a week break from LSR to work on more stuff. SpaceDock link is out to download for early access. https://spacedock.info/mod/3434/Linbol System Rebirth

Edited July 25, 2023 by JNSQFan

[Watermel00n]

Vera with its unusually reflective rings

The twin gas giants...