[1.12.5] Sterling Systems v0.4.9 [Sep 22, 2024]

[Brigadier]

Any future with a CKAN config for this mod?

[JadeOfMaar]

On 3/3/2024 at 12:46 AM, Brigadier said:

Any future with a CKAN config for this mod?

Absolutely. But as this mod grows, more downloads to choose from will appear and existing ones may split. I don't want to grief the CKAN ecosystem with that.

[Fanta_Racer]

Hi, @JadeOfMaar, I've downloaded the latest version of your mod but ran into some complications. I've got ZIP-files from the GitHub and from what I understood, I had to drag files from Zip-file/GameData to Ksp/english/GameData. So i transfered SterlingCore, SterlingElectrics, SterlingThermals and PSIWedge into my KSP/GameData folder but nothing showed up in game. I tried to group them up (Put Electrics, thermals into SterlingCore folder) it didnt work as well. My version is 1.12.5 plus I have plugins from CKAN, if you need the mod list, logs, etc, I'll provide that. Thanks

[Ariel Kerman]

6 hours ago, Fanta_Racer said:

Hi, @JadeOfMaar, I've downloaded the latest version of your mod but ran into some complications. I've got ZIP-files from the GitHub and from what I understood, I had to drag files from Zip-file/GameData to Ksp/english/GameData. So i transfered SterlingCore, SterlingElectrics, SterlingThermals and PSIWedge into my KSP/GameData folder but nothing showed up in game. I tried to group them up (Put Electrics, thermals into SterlingCore folder) it didnt work as well. My version is 1.12.5 plus I have plugins from CKAN, if you need the mod list, logs, etc, I'll provide that. Thanks

Hi there, not JadeOfMaar but maybe i can help! seems like a bad install right there.
First delete all Sterling files from your KSP folder, either in the root folder or the GameData.
Secondly, unzip the files from GitHub somewhere in your PC, make sure you download them from the proper repository.
Thirdly, move the entire "game data" folder into your KSP root directory, the path sould be something like this: "your disc"\"your game store"\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\SterlingSystems. Usually it should'nt be nothing else in the middle beetween KSP folder and the mod's folder.
Finally, you have to do the same thing for all Sterling Systems complements, electrical, thermals, etc. If you unzip them INSIDE the Sterlings folder, thats the reason it didnt work for you. Inside the Sterling directory, the only folders you should see after download the complete bundle are:
Agency
Electric
Engines
Tankage
Thermals
version 

Cheers.

Edited March 25 by Ariel Kerman

[JadeOfMaar]

9 hours ago, Fanta_Racer said:

Hi, @JadeOfMaar, I've downloaded the latest version of your mod but ran into some complications. I've got ZIP-files from the GitHub and from what I understood, I had to drag files from Zip-file/GameData to Ksp/english/GameData. So i transfered SterlingCore, SterlingElectrics, SterlingThermals and PSIWedge into my KSP/GameData folder but nothing showed up in game. I tried to group them up (Put Electrics, thermals into SterlingCore folder) it didnt work as well. My version is 1.12.5 plus I have plugins from CKAN, if you need the mod list, logs, etc, I'll provide that. Thanks

Howdy. You will find that all of the downloads for Sterling Systems and Psi Wedge contain a GameData folder for use as location reference. When you unzip and combine them, everything inside their GameData folder must remain positioned relative to the actual GameData folder. Any other positioning breaks the mods. You must have:

• GameData/SterlingSystems/<everything>
• GameData/PsiWedge/

You must not have:

• Another GameData inside your GameData
• Anything outside of GameData/SterlingSystems/ unless it's an optional modlet
• GameData/<Zip file name which tencds to also contain the version number>
• One mod inside another

If you actually have this directory "Ksp/english/GameData/" then I figure you have entirely broken your game.

[Fanta_Racer]

Quote

If you actually have this directory "Ksp/english/GameData/" then I figure you have entirely broken your game.

I don't think so, its actually because I've got the game from Epic Games Store.

 

Thanks a lot @JadeOfMaar and @Ariel Kerman for chewing this out for me. Love the part from all the mods, now I just gotta figure out B9PartSwitch error where it cant find Interstellar Extended fuel types....

[Jeffery Kerman]

On 4/2/2024 at 4:44 AM, Fanta_Racer said:

...now I just gotta figure out B9PartSwitch error where it cant find Interstellar Extended fuel types....

This may be a stupid question, (more like is a stupid question) but do you have B9PartSwitch installed correctly?

[Fanta_Racer]

On 4/5/2024 at 12:42 AM, Jeffery Kerman said:

This may be a stupid question, (more like is a stupid question) but do you have B9PartSwitch installed correctly?

Yes, just deleted it from the folder and reinstalled through CKAN (got the last version), but it was the same before and after.

Edit: Apparently the error was caused by Rational Resources by @JadeOfMaar? It was a B9PartSwitch tanktype error about FusionPallets and RR_Mopedantte. 

Edit 2: So what I found was that you shouldnt use 0.3.7.1 core with 0.3.7 tankage because core will be demanding fuel type and tank type which dont exist in earlier tankage and B9PartSwitch with show a fatal error( you can still play the game but the error window will stay and has only Quit button)  .

Edited April 10 by Fanta_Racer

[JadeOfMaar]

Release 0.3.8

Additions

• Added Stackable liquid film radiators.
• Added World Power parts:
  • Solar Thermal Panel
  • Solar Thermal Tower
  • Air-breathing radiator suite
• Added equivalent to Rational Resources Nuclear Family, removing external requirement.
• Created custom Waterfall template for BCAM engine.

Changes

• Adjusted volume calculation for inline heatsinks. The larger ones get a bit more loop volume.
• Buffed thrust on BCAM engine (Undid excessive nerf).
• Raised some engines' loop temperature since the liquid film radiators now exist and can cover their great needs.
• Changed Olympian and Icarus ICF engines to be single-mode.
• Reduced System Heat power of BCAM engine. Its scale factor was 10x what it should be.

Fixes

• Fixed Icarus engine's System Heat engine module and converter module using the same heat loop.
• Fixed possible missing/incomplete KerbalismSystemHeat patches.
• Fixed tank shroud issue and antimatter issues with Sterling Tankage.
• Fixed turbine generators missing System Heat modules (resulting in -1% efficiency).

 

@Fanta_Racer Here's hoping that B9 fatal issue is gone. Between this and OPT recently I've reached a new level of stretching myself making/fixing mods.

Edited April 20 by JadeOfMaar
Added custom Waterfall plume to BCAM (and missing Engines upload on the GitHub)

[AbsolutelyNotKirrim]

do the liquid film radiators work with system haet?

[JadeOfMaar]

6 minutes ago, AbsolutelyNotKirrim said:

do the liquid film radiators work with system haet?

Absolutely. Loop temperatures are given in the promo image.

[AbsolutelyNotKirrim]

yay

[Ariel Kerman]

The Calabash engine's reactor reach his 1600k peak temperature and shutdown, doesnt matter how much i try to cool him down, even if the engine itself is deactivate. Im using the liquid radiators, but also tried with the ones in FFT mod and the overheat is still there. Can provide a log file but my game is heavily modded, and i dont think is a mod compatibility issue anyway. Any other engine works just fine...

[EnderiumSmith]

How do you stack the droplet radiators? I saw a a post on reddit that has them 1km long but when i put them on top of each other the model doesnt change

[JadeOfMaar]

11 hours ago, Ariel Kerman said:

The Calabash engine's reactor reach his 1600k peak temperature and shutdown, doesnt matter how much i try to cool him down, even if the engine itself is deactivate. Im using the liquid radiators, but also tried with the ones in FFT mod and the overheat is still there. Can provide a log file but my game is heavily modded, and i dont think is a mod compatibility issue anyway. Any other engine works just fine...

That's an oops on my part. I've caught the exact issue elsewhere but not there. The loop temperature value is the same as the shutdown temperature value. In SterlingSystems\Engines\zPatches\SystemHeatFusionEngines.cfg go to line 70 and raise the value there. The shutdown temperature for the ICF engines is 2000.

6 hours ago, EnderiumSmith said:

How do you stack the droplet radiators? I saw a a post on reddit that has them 1km long but when i put them on top of each other the model doesnt change

You stack them via their stack nodes. What you saw features custom configs that scale them very far in one axis and raises their power to match their custom length. Look closely and you'll realize the part is literally stretched.

Edited April 23 by JadeOfMaar

[EnderiumSmith]

45 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

You stack them via their stack nodes. What you saw features custom configs that scale them very far in one axis and raises their power to match their custom length. Look closely and you'll realize the part is literally stretched.

Ah. then they arent any more stackable than the graphene ones. Length variation would be more useful than width. They dont looks as cool without the 1:20 aspect ratio

[JadeOfMaar]

8 minutes ago, EnderiumSmith said:

Length variation would be more useful than width. They dont looks as cool without the 1:20 aspect ratio

Noted. I may make it so with further parts I make.

[Ariel Kerman]

10 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

That's an oops on my part. I've caught the exact issue elsewhere but not there. The loop temperature value is the same as the shutdown temperature value. In SterlingSystems\Engines\zPatches\SystemHeatFusionEngines.cfg go to line 70 and raise the value there. The shutdown temperature for the ICF engines is 2000.

Well... thats work for sure, thx!

[The Dressian Exploder]

Just asking about the mod's SystemHeat configs, they seem to be a little odd. The 1.25m Thermal nozzle seems to generate a rather absurd amount of SystemHeat considering its whole deal is transferring it into a propellant -at full throttle it overheats in only a few seconds without ludicrous amounts of cooling. Additionally, the heat sinks are integrated with SystemHeat but seem to have very little actual interaction with it. I suppose what I'm asking is how the parts are meant to be used and how SystemHeat factors in?

[The Dressian Exploder]

I'm not sure what the intended method of using the thermal engines is, but the way I'd go about it is by having the heat sink parts essentially convert System heat into ThermalPower which the engines can subsequently run off. Instead they seem to rely entirely on the ThermalPower only produced by some of Sterling's reactors, which uses the old Core Heat system and have no SystemHeat configs. This should, in theory, work (until the engines overheat) but doesn't really allow for heat sources other than Sterling's own reactors. I suppose the optimal solution would be some method to run the engines directly off of System heat, though I don't know if that's possible

 

EDIT: Having taken a better look through the readme, I think I understand the system better, but SystemHeat integration is still pretty suboptimal -the glaring issue being thermal engines overheating far, far too easily. Heat sinks being able to generate ThermalPower from system heat would be pretty cool and allow for some interesting propulsion methods like running a spacecraft off of Ore or, well, any heat source outside of this mod.

Edited May 14 by The Dressian Exploder

[JadeOfMaar]

10 hours ago, The Dressian Exploder said:

Just asking about the mod's SystemHeat configs, they seem to be a little odd. The 1.25m Thermal nozzle seems to generate a rather absurd amount of SystemHeat considering its whole deal is transferring it into a propellant -at full throttle it overheats in only a few seconds without ludicrous amounts of cooling. Additionally, the heat sinks are integrated with SystemHeat but seem to have very little actual interaction with it. I suppose what I'm asking is how the parts are meant to be used and how SystemHeat factors in?

The absurd heat issue is one that was pointed out rather recently and somehow I failed to realize that myself. That heat generation rate will be cut down to 1/10 as much in the pending update.

You can get the config here. At line 40, the systemPower value is what matters but there are other little changes. The other System Heat engine configs have changes to them too, mainly fixes to their temperature curves so you may want those too.

The point of a System Heat compatible heatsink is to add lots of volume to a loop and slow the rate of change across the loop. They are capacitors but for heat. Unfortunately, I have no grasp of what the undefined default coolant type is and it seems quite insufficient given the scale of things that my parts and FFT's parts are made for, so the heat sinks I've provided so far may have a very small impact when they should have a large impact. I've considered doing something about that and either providing advanced heatsink models that provide some higher order of magnitude of capacity or providing a volume multiplier switch (with upgrade system involvement) to the existing ones. Neither option will happen anytime soon, though.

10 hours ago, The Dressian Exploder said:

I'm not sure what the intended method of using the thermal engines is, but the way I'd go about it is by having the heat sink parts essentially convert System heat into ThermalPower which the engines can subsequently run off. Instead they seem to rely entirely on the ThermalPower only produced by some of Sterling's reactors, which uses the old Core Heat system and have no SystemHeat configs. This should, in theory, work (until the engines overheat) but doesn't really allow for heat sources other than Sterling's own reactors. I suppose the optimal solution would be some method to run the engines directly off of System heat, though I don't know if that's possible

 

EDIT: Having taken a better look through the readme, I think I understand the system better, but SystemHeat integration is still pretty suboptimal -the glaring issue being thermal engines overheating far, far too easily. Heat sinks being able to generate ThermalPower from system heat would be pretty cool and allow for some interesting propulsion methods like running a spacecraft off of Ore or, well, any heat source outside of this mod.

The intended method is simply: Use Sterling's reactors to generate adequate amounts of ThermalPower --> Use (and throttle limit) the thermal nozzles which are fed by ThermalPower --> What waste heat they generate demands System Heat compatible radiators. The thermal nozzles themselves are an option for main engines for shuttles and fight for the spots of both the RAPIER and NERV on your lander and spaceplane or the spot of your NERV cluster on your not-so-low-tech nuclear grand tour ship.

It's not terribly important (to me) that the reactors lack configs. They only use Core Heat for a slow startup and don't use System Heat because all heat energy that comes out of them is useful and none is waste. Waste heat only happens when it reaches the generators, engines or other things that process and use heat. Making them use System Heat means they'll either become dead weight if they contribute 0 to a loop, or they'll still produce waste heat and demand radiators (which is the point of the generators). I would have to make them demand a very small radiator capacity in order to function without becoming a wasteful burden on existing craft.

Making the generators extract loop heat and produce ThermalPower seems very good in concept. If the loop temperature is high enough then it should work, and have the throughput scale with the loop temperature. But my testing has had bad results. I'd rather not have to use the negative heat values cheat but doing so apparently leads to negative efficiency which climbs to 0 as the converter warms up, then the converter overheats and fails when it reaches the optimum loop temperature.

As for running a spacecraft on Ore, consider using the mass driver engines in Stockalike Mining Extension and Sterling's metal fuel cells for good, powerful, non-nuclear electric generation. As for "interesting propulsion methods" I have a few engine types planned but I can't promise when I'll make them.

Edited May 15 by JadeOfMaar

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

@JadeOfMaar

I can't understand which reactor to use with which engine? The molten salt reactors dont seem to make enough ThermalPower for the nozzles at all?

[JadeOfMaar]

@KspNoobUsernameTaken The molten salt reactors aren't for use with engines. The pebble bed reactors are. Throttle limit the thermal nozzles too. Surely most deep space ships won't need more than, idk, 30% their peak thrust. Unlikw with Near Future's fission reactors and ion engines, it's not so simple a mini-game of matching a reactor to an engine.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@KspNoobUsernameTaken The molten salt reactors aren't for use with engines. The pebble bed reactors are. Throttle limit the thermal nozzles too. Surely most deep space ships won't need more than, idk, 30% their peak thrust. Unlikw with Near Future's fission reactors and ion engines, it's not so simple a mini-game of matching a reactor to an engine.

Ah, the throttle limiter was what I was missing...

They dont seem great as Kerbin engines though. LH2 consumption is insane.

 

Is the solar panel -> ThermalPower implemented yet? I couldn't find anything about it in game.

[JadeOfMaar]

@KspNoobUsernameTaken I would never recommend using a Hydrogen engine for sea level. I would recommend Methane as it has some respectable density for use for heavy lifters and unless I'm mistaken, I've baked in the cryo fuel switching from Rational Resources Nuclear Family. The thermal nozzles and SULEU engines should be able to run on things other than Hydrogen.

The broader solar thermal panel suite isn't out yet but you can try out the gameplay loop via the variants of the Sterling super heavy shield and two of the World Power boxed parts.