Kethane Pack 0.9.2 - New cinematic trailer! - 1.0 compatibility update

[Majiir]

I've come across some unusual behaviour in this mod. I have a kethane miner ship, half full of kethane, with a converter attached. There are 7 engines - 6 radially mounted and the 7th in the centre. If I set the ship off on an extended manouver, and have the kethane converter running to replenish the fuel on the go, then at about 1-2 minutes into the burn one of the radial engines will throttle right down to almost zero, obviously causing the ship to veer off course.

It's definitely related to having the converter running because if I use exactly the same ship and perform the burn without the converter running then the ship behaves as expected.

This is a bug in the KSP fuel routing system. I'd love for Kethane converters to be used mid-flight, but that will require a TacLib-style reimplementation of the resource request routines.

[knoss]

still loving the mod and some of the mods that have support the kelthane

and with that

are there plans if a money system is implemented that retrieved kethane can be sold to finance your space program?

other methods of refinement? (kethane retrieved in different bioms could require different refinement methods)

(been slowly trying to build a floating oil rig to get at some kethane on kerbans water LOL fun challenge) (KAS has helped)

[HammerHead90]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I gathered, Kethane is finite? As in, you can mine a finite amount of Kethane from the planet, and then it's gone?

If it is, it's a major downside IMO and I'd gladly change it on my side to be infinite.

[XbasmanX]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I gathered, Kethane is finite? As in, you can mine a finite amount of Kethane from the planet, and then it's gone?

If it is, it's a major downside IMO and I'd gladly change it on my side to be infinite.

There is a debug tool you can add to the settings, to regen Ketane if you want to use it.

[HammerHead90]

Alright, that solves it then!

You see, running out of resources on Duna or other bigger bodies shouldn't be a problem. Minmus could have a finite number of sources of limited quantity, but larger planets should have lots of high quantity sources, not large patches of a resource that you can quickly run out.

That's my three cents, I'll probably try to edit resgen.dll for my needs sometime later.

Thanks for all your help!

[BigD145]

Alright, that solves it then!

You see, running out of resources on Duna or other bigger bodies shouldn't be a problem. Minmus could have a finite number of sources of limited quantity, but larger planets should have lots of high quantity sources, not large patches of a resource that you can quickly run out.

That's my three cents, I'll probably try to edit resgen.dll for my needs sometime later.

Thanks for all your help!

You know exactly how Kethane works in the solar system?

[Galane]

I've run the converters in flight on some ships, along with TAC fuel balancer. The problem I have on some is that with the converter running MechJeb will reduce throttle, which is not a good thing when ascending to orbit.

[lunaticPhD]

So I'm having a problem, my game load screen is getting to kethane/parts/kethane_generator/part/kethane_generator and just staying there indefinitely. It's not freezing or anything, the screen is just staying there like it can't load the generator or something. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas as to why this is happening and how to fix it?

[Superfluous J]

Don't know why that'd be happening, but I'd try reinstalling the Kethane mod from a fresh download.

Did you install mods recently? You didn't say that Kethane is a new install for you, but it or any other mod could have caused you to hit the memory limit of KSP.

[Eadrom]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I gathered, Kethane is finite? As in, you can mine a finite amount of Kethane from the planet, and then it's gone?

If it is, it's a major downside IMO and I'd gladly change it on my side to be infinite.

I logged all of my deposits on one of my .22 saves a while back and it was almost 15,000,000 liters of Kethane. That is *just* for Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus. That is *a lot* of Kethane just in Kerbin's SoI. If you take away the Kethane on Kerbin and just count Mun (~8 million liters) and Minmus (~4.5 million liters), I don't know if anyone plays so much that they could mine out and use all of the Kethane on Kerbin's moons. That's over 781 of the largest stock Kethane tanks (16,000 liters each) to mine out all the Kethane on Kerbin's moons. If you consider the TENS of millions of Kethane also available on all the other planets and moons, I would think that no one would ever need to worry about running out of Kethane to mine. I think even if you played on a KMP server with a bunch of other people, you probably still wouldn't need to worry about depleting the system of Kethane.

[Kiapha]

Even if running out is a problem, you can easily edit the resource file to any amount you want. (resources file is GameData/Kethane/Resources/Kethane.cfg and you simply change MinQuanity and MaxQuantity) I have mine set for 10x default, so even if I never start a new game, and play KMP with dozens of people, it should never be an issue.

[Frederf]

Is it worth considering a scanning system that is able to scan in a range of solid angle? Perhaps it's still cell-by-cell, once every N seconds, but can gimble to reach areas in sight not necessarily directly below the craft.

[Majiir]

Is it worth considering a scanning system that is able to scan in a range of solid angle? Perhaps it's still cell-by-cell, once every N seconds, but can gimble to reach areas in sight not necessarily directly below the craft.

This is the most likely upgrade the scanning system will see first. I'm not a fan of the cone scanning concepts which would reveal large swaths of cells in a single cycle.

[Galane]

There's so much in the system you won't have to worry about "peak kethane" for a very long time. ;-)

[B787_300]

This is the most likely upgrade the scanning system will see first. I'm not a fan of the cone scanning concepts which would reveal large swaths of cells in a single cycle.

But that is how it works IRL, i currently hat how i have to sit and watch my Kethane mapper for months of game time at max warp trying to cover the entire planet. IRL Sats "see" a cone a best or a relatively large line and sweep it out, and this line they can see is defined by their orbit and what scanner they have. Right now I find it terrible that it does it cell by cell and takes FOREVER to map the entirety of say Kerbin, which can be alleviated by nixing the scan time values in the Config, but i all reality you should do what ISA or ScanSat does and make it so that with a well placed orbit it will be faster to scan. Maybe make it so that you have two types of Kethane data, Coarse and Fine which rely on the different scanners, but please make it so that scanning a given body is much faster.

[PringleMan]

But that is how it works IRL, i currently hat how i have to sit and watch my Kethane mapper for months of game time at max warp trying to cover the entire planet. IRL Sats "see" a cone a best or a relatively large line and sweep it out, and this line they can see is defined by their orbit and what scanner they have. Right now I find it terrible that it does it cell by cell and takes FOREVER to map the entirety of say Kerbin, which can be alleviated by nixing the scan time values in the Config, but i all reality you should do what ISA or ScanSat does and make it so that with a well placed orbit it will be faster to scan. Maybe make it so that you have two types of Kethane data, Coarse and Fine which rely on the different scanners, but please make it so that scanning a given body is much faster.

Just pretend that the scanner wavelengths become highly scattered at theta > 80 degrees (from horizontal, 10 degrees from vertical) or so (20 Pi / 45 Radians), and anything above 80 degrees has to great an error to consider accurate. Problem solved, scanners have to detect straight down or you do not get valid data.

[SyberSmoke]

This is the most likely upgrade the scanning system will see first. I'm not a fan of the cone scanning concepts which would reveal large swaths of cells in a single cycle.

The question is though...is the point of the mod to scan planets...letting the game sit a run while you go off watch a movie and have lunch? That strikes me as dull as the player can only sit there till they find all of what they need. I guess I bought into a philosophy of game design where the game mechanics should promote fun and not be busy work...scaning as it is is more busy work when really, the goal should be to find the resources then figure out how best to get them...should it not?

[B787_300]

Just pretend that the scanner wavelengths become highly scattered at theta > 80 degrees (from horizontal, 10 degrees from vertical) or so (20 Pi / 45 Radians), and anything above 80 degrees has to great an error to consider accurate. Problem solved, scanners have to detect straight down or you do not get valid data.

No the Guy above me/below you has a good point, and with the exception of spy sats what scanning satelite does that? Also this mod is terrible with RSS because of the scan length

[taniwha]

If the scanning is done by a tight beam radar (or even a laser: very tight!), those hexes are huge. Actually, they are anyway: iirc, they're about 15.7km across the narrow part for Kerbin (I believe they have centers on 1.5 degrees).

[wasmic]

Anyway, I don't care whether it's realistic or not, scanners should sweep broader areas, especially when only one scanner sattelite can be active at a time. It's really sad to waste months of game time trying to map a body.

[taniwha]

If you're taking months of game-time, you're doing it wrong (unless the body takes months to do 12-20 rotations).

[Wahgineer]

If you're taking months of game-time, you're doing it wrong (unless the body takes months to do 12-20 rotations).

which would be a valid point if the scanner had a cone shaped scanning field that covered 15-25 kilometers a pass.

[Frederf]

This is the most likely upgrade the scanning system will see first. I'm not a fan of the cone scanning concepts which would reveal large swaths of cells in a single cycle.

It could be balanced so that the scan time meant you would only scan the cell below the craft on the first pass so it'd be indistinguishable from current. Only on subsequent passes would the scanner see previous filled cells and have time to side look.

For RSS-compatibility perhaps scanning should be a range based on math depending on the body radius current SOI? Kerbin, Earth-sized-Kerbin, Mun, would all have different min/max altitudes as the geometry scales.

Edited November 26, 2013 by Frederf

[Majiir]

which would be a valid point if the scanner had a cone shaped scanning field that covered 15-25 kilometers a pass.

Cells are about 22km across on Kerbin.

[Wuz314159]

Not sure what happened, but my Kethane map overlays are missing.

I can't find the dialogue box on any of my saved games & tried reinstalling the plugin. No avail.

Scanners do scan the surfaces correctly as I can hear the tones, just the map is missing.

idk if the dialogue box is just hidden some place I can't access it or what.

Suggestions?