Custom Resource Mods

[LittleBitMore]

Hi! I wanna know your thoughts on custom resource mods.

Specifically, I've been looking at mods like Rational Resources and Classic Stock Resources for making ISRU more interesting, but I have a few issues:

• Classic Stock Resources was my go to choice based on its description on the Github, does not work for multiple reasons
  • I had to manually move some files from the Github to the installed version to make it have the resources at all (the install version is a bit broken)
  • You do not seem to be able to store the resources by default. I fixed this with a very crude Configurable Containers patch
  • You do not seem to be able to mine the resources located on celestial bodies, as drills only work for Ore
  • You do not seem to be able to process the resources into usable things, as there are no parts added in the mod to implement this
  • I haven't found any mods that are based on Classic Stock Resources to include parts for storing, drilling, or refining these resources, nor have I found a KSP forum post for it (I only found it on Github)
• Rational Resources, while cool and functional, has its own drawbacks
  • It seems too "realistic" and not as whimsical as Classic Stock Resources
  • I have to make patches for every celestial body I want to mine resources from, which is inconvenient considering I am operating a save with 4 additional star systems (Classic Stock Resources doesn't seem to have this issue, as it has default configs for all celestial bodies)
• I don't yet know of any others, but I may just be bad at looking

What resource mods do you prefer, and why? Do you have advice on how to get Classic Stock Resources working, or any mods that add the required parts? Do you have any suggestions for other mods to look at for my situation?

[Krakatoa]

All of the Wild Blue Industries mods are set up to work with Classic Stock Resources, you just need to make the selection during install, if from CKAN, or the first time you boot the game if a manual install, if it works the same as it did a little bit ago. AFAIK, that's about it. There's a decent chance JadeOfMaar has a number of mods that work with Classic Stock, too. I personally prefer the Community Resource Pack system, but that's mostly because a lot of mods are set up to work with it. I wouldn't be very particular about which ecosystem I decided to use if they were both fully picked up by modders.

[LittleBitMore]

1 hour ago, Krakatoa said:

All of the Wild Blue Industries mods are set up to work with Classic Stock Resources, you just need to make the selection during install, if from CKAN, or the first time you boot the game if a manual install, if it works the same as it did a little bit ago. AFAIK, that's about it. There's a decent chance JadeOfMaar has a number of mods that work with Classic Stock, too. I personally prefer the Community Resource Pack system, but that's mostly because a lot of mods are set up to work with it. I wouldn't be very particular about which ecosystem I decided to use if they were both fully picked up by modders.

thank you for your response! Do you know which Wild Blue Industries mods would include resource gathering/processing/storage parts for Classic Stock (or port these features to stock parts)? I've had no luck searching so far

Edited May 1 by LittleBitMore

[JadeOfMaar]

5 hours ago, LittleBitMore said:

Hi! I wanna know your thoughts on custom resource mods.

Specifically, I've been looking at mods like Rational Resources and Classic Stock Resources for making ISRU more interesting, but I have a few issues:

• Classic Stock Resources was my go to choice based on its description on the Github, does not work for multiple reasons
  • I had to manually move some files from the Github to the installed version to make it have the resources at all (the install version is a bit broken)
  • You do not seem to be able to store the resources by default. I fixed this with a very crude Configurable Containers patch
  • You do not seem to be able to mine the resources located on celestial bodies, as drills only work for Ore
  • You do not seem to be able to process the resources into usable things, as there are no parts added in the mod to implement this
  • I haven't found any mods that are based on Classic Stock Resources to include parts for storing, drilling, or refining these resources, nor have I found a KSP forum post for it (I only found it on Github)
• Rational Resources, while cool and functional, has its own drawbacks
  • It seems too "realistic" and not as whimsical as Classic Stock Resources
  • I have to make patches for every celestial body I want to mine resources from, which is inconvenient considering I am operating a save with 4 additional star systems (Classic Stock Resources doesn't seem to have this issue, as it has default configs for all celestial bodies)
• I don't yet know of any others, but I may just be bad at looking

What resource mods do you prefer, and why? Do you have advice on how to get Classic Stock Resources working, or any mods that add the required parts? Do you have any suggestions for other mods to look at for my situation?

Howdy. Rational Resources supports Classic Stock. It helps (but shouldn't be mandatory) that you do not have Community Resource Pack (and, therefore, no mods that have a hard dependency on it). It is not a resource library (that it would compete with CRP or Classic), it only controls the placements of resources. The issue of "too realistic" and needing to write configs to support planets is the point of "rational." The completely random, default placement of resources is treated as irrational and is deactivated, leaving no resource loadout (except Ore) for unsupported planets. Resources are then arranged on planets based on what the planet would be presumed to be primarily composed of. Example: It is rational that you can't get radioactives and heavy metals at ice planets. But it is also rational that ice planets will be full of Nitrogen or water, with a good chance of Ammonia, which is welcome by Kerbalism players. It is rational that a volcanic planet would have a lot of Gypsum (a Sulfur compound used in-game) and Carbon Dioxide and would lack in cryo substances. I don't go out of my way to find every planet mod out there and write configs for them. I handle popular and recent ones (mostly on request) then it's up to the owner of whatever other planet mod to do the same. And I've made it easy to do so via a template system which makes MM do a lot of work.

About the shortcomings listed with Classic Stock the first problem is that Classic Stock in itself is only a resource library and resource placement mod. The second is that I've cut back from making or updating mods to be compatible with it. It's too rare that I see a post of someone showing their Classic Stock shenanigans and I've changed to just making parts so I'm very short on feedback and motivation to add or maintain compatibility.

For use of Classic Stock's resources I do provide some solutions already:

• Rational Resources Companion provides integration of ISRU parts for CRP and for Classic Stock. But... most Classic Stock integrations require the Pathfinder mod to be installed (in which case, all compatible refineries become omniconverters and all harvester types except exospheric change to use WBI's module for omni drills -- one module to dig up all resources, once you've unlocked the current biome with a Geology lab). If the Pathfinder requirement is a bad decision then I don't know due to lack of feedback.
• Rational Resources Squad + Rational Resources Companion cause all Squad tanks and CryoTanks to (use B9 Part Switch and) hold Classic Stock's resources.
• I have patches for a few of Nertea's mods here on my Sandbox repo. Feel free to try them out and give feedback.
  • The config for CryoTanks and RaptiumEngine may easily conflict with some Rational Resources mods. I chose not to publish them since I didn't get the impression that they would be popular and I didn't want to end up doing a lot more for the Near Future mods.
• (Not something I provide, but) as @Krakatoa pointed out, all of the Wild Blue Industries mods are made to work with Classic Stock.
  • Pathfinder is the base-building and heavy industry mod. The lion's share of ISRU chain goodness is in there, hence the prior mentioned requirement on it.
  • DSEV, the station parts mod is the best place for tanks, but I think it lacks a fair bit in options.
  • Buffalo 2, the rover mod, is a fine option for small (1.875m-ish) tanks.

 

I'm of two minds for a preferred resource system. I like Classic Stock because it doesn't have the sheer width of a vast array of resources for every niche use case like CRP and real life. KSP gameplay is simple by nature... But I like CRP because real resources bring real data that I can do math and come up with interesting and specific results on.

Edited May 1 by JadeOfMaar

[LittleBitMore]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Howdy. Rational Resources supports Classic Stock. It helps (but shouldn't be mandatory) that you do not have Community Resource Pack (and, therefore, no mods that have a hard dependency on it). It is not a resource library (that it would compete with CRP or Classic), it only controls the placements of resources. The issue of "too realistic" and needing to write configs to support planets is the point of "rational." The completely random, default placement of resources is treated as irrational and is deactivated, leaving no resource loadout (except Ore) for unsupported planets. Resources are then arranged on planets based on what the planet would be presumed to be primarily composed of. Example: It is rational that you can't get radioactives and heavy metals at ice planets. But it is also rational that ice planets will be full of Nitrogen or water, with a good chance of Ammonia, which is welcome by Kerbalism players. It is rational that a volcanic planet would have a lot of Gypsum (a Sulfur compound used in-game) and Carbon Dioxide and would lack in cryo substances. I don't go out of my way to find every planet mod out there and write configs for them. I handle popular and recent ones (mostly on request) then it's up to the owner of whatever other planet mod to do the same. And I've made it easy to do so via a template system which makes MM do a lot of work.

About the shortcomings listed with Classic Stock the first problem is that Classic Stock in itself is only a resource library and resource placement mod. The second is that I've cut back from making or updating mods to be compatible with it. It's too rare that I see a post of someone showing their Classic Stock shenanigans and I've changed to just making parts so I'm very short on feedback and motivation to add or maintain compatibility.

For use of Classic Stock's resources I do provide some solutions already:

• Rational Resources Companion provides integration of ISRU parts for CRP and for Classic Stock. But... most Classic Stock integrations require the Pathfinder mod to be installed (in which case, all compatible refineries become omniconverters and all harvester types except exospheric change to use WBI's module for omni drills -- one module to dig up all resources, once you've unlocked the current biome with a Geology lab). If the Pathfinder requirement is a bad decision then I don't know due to lack of feedback.
• Rational Resources Squad + Rational Resources Companion cause all Squad tanks and CryoTanks to (use B9 Part Switch and) hold Classic Stock's resources.
• I have patches for a few of Nertea's mods here on my Sandbox repo. Feel free to try them out and give feedback.
  • The config for CryoTanks and RaptiumEngine may easily conflict with some Rational Resources mods. I chose not to publish them since I didn't get the impression that they would be popular and I didn't want to end up doing a lot more for the Near Future mods.
• (Not something I provide, but) as @Krakatoa pointed out, all of the Wild Blue Industries mods are made to work with Classic Stock.
  • Pathfinder is the base-building and heavy industry mod. The lion's share of ISRU chain goodness is in there, hence the prior mentioned requirement on it.
  • DSEV, the station parts mod is the best place for tanks, but I think it lacks a fair bit in options.
  • Buffalo 2, the rover mod, is a fine option for small (1.875m-ish) tanks.

 

I'm of two minds for a preferred resource system. I like Classic Stock because it doesn't have the sheer width of a vast array of resources for every niche use case like CRP and real life. KSP gameplay is simple by nature... But I like CRP because real resources bring real data that I can do math and come up with interesting and specific results on.

Thank you for your detailed response, I really appreciate this!

I probably won't be using Rational Resources simply because I'm really bad with config files and screw it up a lot, and I have a lot of celestial bodies to make configs for (~80). I also can't ask you or someone else to do them for me, seeing as the systems are entirely procedurally generated with Infinite Discoveries and therefore nobody else has the files for them. Otherwise, I would've used Rational Resources since I knew it supported Classic Stock.

After I installed Pathfinder, I did a bit of testing and I think it works for my uses. I've also installed Buffalo 2 and DSEV. Thanks for the advice!

[JadeOfMaar]

53 minutes ago, LittleBitMore said:

Infinite Discoveries

Ohhh. I really was curious to what was supplying your star system. @Sushut is aware of the need for Rational Resources compatibility. It could happen, I'm sure, but a very large procedural galaxy with configs for every planet will easily cause your MM cache to approach 100 MB size so the galaxy gen will need a very big warning label beside the toggle for resource configs.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

On 5/2/2024 at 9:39 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

Ohhh. I really was curious to what was supplying your star system. @Sushut is aware of the need for Rational Resources compatibility. It could happen, I'm sure, but a very large procedural galaxy with configs for every planet will easily cause your MM cache to approach 100 MB size so the galaxy gen will need a very big warning label beside the toggle for resource configs.

Perhaps Infinite Discoveries could have a tag on each planet generated, "PROCEDURAL GENERATION" or similar, and Rational Resources could be setup to ignore said planets?

[theJesuit]

@LittleBitMore,

Can i interest you in SIMPLEX Resources? 3 Ores (plus a water equivalent) instead of just one, necessitating considering how and where you look to mine resources.