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

[Superfluous J]

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

With a 2-small-scanner orbiter, I orbited Minmus at 10km (the lowest point you can orbit and go 50x speed) in a polar orbit on the terminator (so it was never in night) and it took 3 *days* to map the planet enough to have well over half of it scanned. Sure, there are lines missing but I can tell where the Kethane is there. If I'd let it go 4 days, it would have finished but my probe had the gas to get to Duna and the window opened so I opted to go instead of waiting for information that I simply didn't need.

[BigD145]

Reinstall if interface disappears. Just kill the folder in gamedata and replace it.

[taniwha]

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

There are something like 240 cells around the equator. You can get between 6 and 12 orbits in a Kerbin day (6h) thus between 12 and 24 equator crossings in a Kerbin day. If your orbit is trimmed just right, you can nearly fill the equator in 10-20 days, and the temperate and polar regions will be mostly solid minus the poles themselves.

[edit]Majiir just told me (irc) there are 160 equatorial cells. Make that 7-14 days.

Edited November 26, 2013 by taniwha

[Galane]

If a cell is tapped out, will it turn to white if a scanner scans it again?

[taniwha]

Galane: I believe the color updates even without scanning (the numbers in the mouse-over certainly do).

[Spatzimaus]

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

Not necessarily. While it's true that the total amount of Kethane is extremely large, the total amount of ACCESSIBLE Kethane is quite a bit smaller. A polar deposit is unlikely to get tapped (especially if the terrain is like Mun's poles), and the deposits on Kerbin, Eve, etc. are similarly inaccessible; sure, you CAN land on these bodies, but would you? (Why would you drill on Kerbin to get a resource that refines into fuels you could just launch from KSC instead?) Kerbin, Eve, and Laythe also have the problem of oceans; a deposit doesn't do you any good if you can't drill at that location, and nearly all of Laythe is ocean.

So in practice, the more-or-less-equatorial deposits on the lower-gravity airless bodies are the ones you'll be building a resource network around. And that cuts the practical amounts down quite a bit. For instance, my Joolian fuel depots refuel off Pol, due to its low gravity, although I've occasionally refueled from all of the others (yes, even Tylo). My 300-ton depot arrived near Pol with about 30% fuel onboard after the trip from Kerbin, and refueling it required almost 100k Kethane, which knocked a big chunk off the largest deposit on Pol (440k originally). Sure, that Kethane turned into a lot of fuel, so I won't need to refill it very often, but if this were a non-beta campaign I'd eventually run into serious fuel problems after a couple dozen refills.

Honestly, it boils down to a really simple question: if resources are intended to be effectively infinite, then what's the point of having finite quantities in the first place? But if you're intended to eventually run out, then that'll kill the gameplay once it happens. Not only that it'll make some mission types impossible, but that it'll discourage you from trying risky things that might waste your precious fuel; risky experimentation that often results in Kerbonauts exploding is a big part of this game, and I'd hate to see that end out of fear of lost resources. I complained about this back when the official resource system was first announced, as well. It's also horribly unrealistic; the quantities of resources on planets are incalculably large compared to what any sort of small drill can extract in a few hours, so it SHOULD be treated as effectively infinite in practice, even if you define the amounts as being what can easily be reached with a shallow drill.

The solution, to me, is something like this:

> Each deposit has a size, just like now, but quite a bit smaller. Say, current size divided by 5, so the biggest deposits will approach 100k units of resource.

> That size affects extraction rate. That is, a deposit currently at 50,000 or more units of Kethane might extract at 100% of the listed rate, but as you go below that threshold the rate scales down linearly, to a minimum rate at ~10k units. (This'd encourage you to prefer the richer deposits even if you don't need that much at any one time.)

> Additionally, all deposits slowly recharge over time, at a rate proportional to their maximum sizes. The rate wouldn't be fast enough that you could just leave a single extractor parked on the richest deposit; instead, you'd be forced to periodically change where you fill your landers (or possibly move your bases). It'd also fix the long-term shortage issue; if you've tapped out the good deposits on Pol, just go mess around with spaceplanes on Kerbin or something for a while, and when you get around to returning to Pol there'll be enough regeneration to make things playable again.

> Scanning with the large scanner (not the tiny little one suitable for your small probes) has a chance of generating a new deposit, with the chance depending on the amount of unextracted Kethane on the body, or increasing the amounts contained in the existing deposits. Effectively, the small scanners only map out easily spotted surface deposits, but the big ones find the deeper stuff.

You could easily make this a two- or three-variable system, where the recharge and extraction rates are decoupled from the deposit size, but I'm trying to keep it simple.

I'm hoping that once the official resource system is in place, something like this will show up in a mod. I'd hate to have to either hack save files or restart my campaigns just to keep things playable in the long term.

[BigD145]

Your third and fourth combined = kethane in every hex, eventually.

[KhaosCorp]

Kethane can be harvested from the water...its not even that hard to do.

[Spatzimaus]

Your third and fourth combined = kethane in every hex, eventually.

Not quite. Read the fourth one again... "with the chance depending on the amount of unextracted Kethane". In other words, if you haven't mined any Kethane at all, then it won't spawn any new deposits. If you HAVE mined Kethane, then it'd spawn new, small deposits (or increase the size of some existing ones)... but implicit in the statement was the assumption that this would be done at the expense of recharging the now-depleted deposit, to keep the total maximum on the planet at a constant level. Really, the third and fourth are intended to be complementary; while they can both be in there, increasing one would be at the expense of the other.

Think of it like this. You've got a 100k-unit deposit. You mine 20k from it. You can do two things:

1> Recharge 20k over time to that deposit. (Point 3 in the previous post.)

2> Create a new 20k deposit or add 20k to some existing deposit other than the one you depleted. (Point 4 in the previous post.)

Ideally, you'd mix and match. Say, recharge 10k over time (making the depleted deposit's maximum now only 90k) while adding a new 10k deposit or adding 10k to some other existing one.

The problem with options 2 and 3 are that in the long term, this'd put all of the resources in the most inaccessible areas. Everything on Laythe would end up under the oceans, for instance, and other planets/moons would end up with everything at the poles. So there have to be a number of practical limits, which I didn't feel like spelling out in that previous post but I assumed the modders would recognize as inherent in the concept. For instance, the ratio between options 1 and 2 could depend on the deposit size, with smaller deposits purely recharging and large deposits mostly spawning/adding. Or, you could add a more complex redistribution logic, where all unused deposits slowly deplete THEMSELVES over time to create new ones, often in more accessible locations.

[Galane]

My last landing on Ike was in a green hex but the drills wouldn't bring up any Kethane, so I had to reload my save and land elsewhere.

[Wuz314159]

Reinstall if interface disappears. Just kill the folder in gamedata and replace it.

Thanks!

I reinstalled, but didn't delete the old data first.

That fixed it!

[Wuz314159]

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.

True.

But part of having a scanner with a greater range is the ability to scan larger areas. No?

What's the point of scanning at 50km versus 1,200km if they both have the same mapping area?

Sorry if my math is a bit off. . .

If the compact scanner can scan an area 22km in diameter on Kerbin, That's 3.15° at 200km. . . Then the big scanner at 1,200km should be able to scan an area of 132km in diameter.

I don't think anyone is out for scanning an entire planetoid in one pass, but the Upgraded scanner here is actually a worse scanner as it has a smaller area of vision.

IMHO

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Franklin]

Hate to fuss, but are there any complimentary mods to the Kethane Pack? I'm hoping to find a little more use for Kethane beyond providing interstellar gas stations. I'd love to be able to sell the stuff to afford parts. Finally make some use of meaningless price tags attached to all the bits and pieces.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I have a question of my own to ask.

I know that Kethane's configuration is currently configured to be a limited resource you have to hunt down and mine. And I know that the easiest way to get 'nigh infinite' kethane is to just go into the config and toss a few extra zeroes on it.

However, I'd like to see an 'infinite' kethane mechanic that still makes you have to do some looking.

So the following option is presented.

In a config file, default kethane is set as normal. However, by changing a value to infinite kethane (a true/false, the distribution engine and density mechanic change in the following ways.

-- When 'infinite' kethane mode is selected.

1:Distribution of Kethane is no longer in large finite blobs, but scattered sparsely in individual surface nodes.

2: The 'density' (I'm assuming total amount of kethane) of a node now governs the kethane recovery RATE, instead of the kethane total.

3: The node contains 'unlimited' kethane, of course.

I present this mainly because I'm a 'set-it and forget-it' kind of guy when it comes to setting up infrastructure operations. One-person managed infrastructure on a large scale is impressive enough to set up when you don't have to consider the job of thousands of people who each look into a tiny piece of the task... But when one player is effectively having to stop and personally oversee every little thing, you quickly run into the parallel-tasking problem that an AI pathfinding algorithm was made for.

It's really the main limitation that keeps KSP into turning into a space infrastructure game. The player can only really do one thing at any given time. Maybe a rapid series of tasks if you abuse kerbal alarm clock and a very strictly timed checklist.

Be kind of cool if stuff could pathfind its way around the universe (provided the desired tasks are within the abilities of the ships you design) while the player's busy. Be kind of cool to build some kerbin-side kethane mining trucks, set a driving destination, and walk away to launch rockets while they drive cross-country.

Hmm... Maybe I should to suggest that. Lazor system has a viable aircraft autopilot. I wonder what it would take to get terrain pathfinding.

[taniwha]

Hate to fuss, but are there any complimentary mods to the Kethane Pack? I'm hoping to find a little more use for Kethane beyond providing interstellar gas stations. I'd love to be able to sell the stuff to afford parts. Finally make some use of meaningless price tags attached to all the bits and pieces.

It still keeps the "interstellar gas stations", but Extraplanetary Launchpads makes use of kethane (scanning, mining, conversion) for providing "interstellar construction yards".

(really interplanetary, but meh, does it really matter?)

[Donziboy2]

I think I broke it:(

Logs

[Sokar408]

Is there a way to find out how many hexagons there is in total around the equator of a planetary body? I'm trying to calculate optimal scanning altitudes

[Warhorse]

Sokar, have you seen this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/27999-ISA-Mapsat-Ideal-and-Non-Ideal-Altitudes ?

[taniwha]

Is there a way to find out how many hexagons there is in total around the equator of a planetary body? I'm trying to calculate optimal scanning altitudes

160. All bodies have the same number of cells.

[Hodo]

Odd thing happened to me recently. No changes to my gamedata folder, only one install added lately and its the enhanced nav ball mod. Now I no longer have the grid overlay for the kethane mapping.

[Wuz314159]

Odd thing happened to me recently. No changes to my gamedata folder, only one install added lately and its the enhanced nav ball mod. Now I no longer have the grid overlay for the kethane mapping.

Same thing happened to me earlier in the week, You can see the answer I got on the previous page. {9367}

Short Answer is delete the Kethane directory from the Gamedata folder & reinstall it.

Worked like a charm for me.

[Hodo]

Same thing happened to me earlier in the week, You can see the answer I got on the previous page. {9367}

Short Answer is delete the Kethane directory from the Gamedata folder & reinstall it.

Worked like a charm for me.

Thanks will try that.

[Hodo]

Same thing happened to me earlier in the week, You can see the answer I got on the previous page. {9367}

Short Answer is delete the Kethane directory from the Gamedata folder & reinstall it.

Worked like a charm for me.

Welp tried that, ended up with the same problem. Deleted the Kethane file in the Gamedata folder and reinstalled, same problem.

Could it be the module manager I am using? Everything else in the plugin is working I just dont have a overlay grid anymore. Which sucks because I have no clue where the Kethane is or how much is there.

[egreSS]

I've had this but keep getting distracted before installing it - I'm sure it's going to ask me in career mode so I figure I'll ask now - if I have interstellar installed and then install this which tech tree do I select? Or will I have to merge it manually?

Nevermind, I stumbled across the answer by accident - just need to edit the part.cfg's manually.

Edited December 1, 2013 by egreSS

[Hodo]

I've had this but keep getting distracted before installing it - I'm sure it's going to ask me in career mode so I figure I'll ask now - if I have interstellar installed and then install this which tech tree do I select? Or will I have to merge it manually?

Nevermind, I stumbled across the answer by accident - just need to edit the part.cfg's manually.

I think its actually added to the tech tree now.