[WIP] Immersive Chemicals

[Charle_Roger]

I was just thinking about where to distribute Organics with an RR patch when I came across this:

I started making Immersive Conversion because I wanted to set up some self-sustaining facility for refuelling and building rockets on a moon of Sarnus, in preparation for sending a bunch of stuff through the Kcalbeloh wormhole (which is new to me), so Organics-rich Eeloo would be very cool.

I should scour the science flavour text in stock and some mods to see if there's any more inspiration like this.

Edited July 24 by Charle_Roger

[Charle_Roger]

@JadeOfMaar Lots of questions for you...

First off, I don't understand how Rational Resources Squad is meant to work. I don't see any cfg file adding things like LqdAmmonia and LqdCO2 to the stock tanks, only RR_MoreTankSwitches seems to have those for mods. I really must be missing something.

Next, I feel like I keep asking this but I'm still unsure, what's up with liquids vs. gases in RR? The templates for atmospheres, exospheres and oceans all use liquids but surfaces use gases, while stars seem to have an odd mix. Right now I just patch all the gases into liquids but I want to understand what's actually going on in RR.

Anything going on with Carbon in RR? It shows up a couple of times commented out, just wondering where you stand on that right now since I've been thinking about how Carbon might play into some later Immersive Conversion functionality.

Have you ever thought about how to consolidate Space Dust with RR atmospheres and exospheres? I love Space Dust's scanning and harvesting systems, but I don't love that they are separate to the usual PLANETARY_RESOURCE system. It would be nice to connect them somehow.

And finally, still no luck using ModuleResourceHarvester in B9PartSwitch, maybe you can help. Here's a simplified case where I try to add a Water option to all drills:

Spoiler

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleResourceHarvester]:HAS[#ResourceName[Ore]]]:FOR[ImmersiveConversion]
{
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleB9PartSwitch
		moduleID = ICDrillSwitch
		switcherDescription = drill type
		affectDragCubes = False
		affectFARVoxels = False

		SUBTYPE
		{
			name = OreDrill
			title = Ore drill
			
			MODULE
			{
				IDENTIFIER
				{
					name = ModuleResourceHarvester
					ResourceName = Ore
				}
				DATA 
				{
					ConverterName = Ore Harvester
					StartActionName = Start Ore Harvester
					StopActionName = Stop Ore Harvester
					ToggleActionName = Toggle Ore Harvester
				}
			}
		}
		SUBTYPE
		{
			name = WaterDrill
			title = Water drill
			
			MODULE
			{
				IDENTIFIER
				{
					name = ModuleResourceHarvester
					ResourceName = Ore
				}
				DATA 
				{
					ResourceName = Water
					ConverterName = Water Harvester
					StartActionName = Start Water Harvester
					StopActionName = Stop Water Harvester
					ToggleActionName = Toggle Water Harvester
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

This targets the correct parts, but results in B9PartSwitch "Could not find matching module" errors on start up. I actually had slightly more success than this before so I don't know what I'm doing wrong now, but I never got it fully working. This is the biggest block for getting something released right now and it's driving me crazy.

Edited July 25 by Charle_Roger

[JadeOfMaar]

8 hours ago, Charle_Roger said:

First off, I don't understand how Rational Resources Squad is meant to work. I don't see any cfg file adding things like LqdAmmonia and LqdCO2 to the stock tanks, only RR_MoreTankSwitches seems to have those for mods. I really must be missing something.

• RR Squad gives a B9PS module with moduleID = RRStockSwitch to all tanks that have stock manufacturers and do not already have a B9PS module and if CryoTanks is not installed.
• RR Companion ( RationalResourcesCompanion/CRP/TankTypes.cfg ) delivers the bulk of subtypes to this moduleID if it exists (when CryoTanks not installed) but will also deliver these subtypes to these tanks if CryoTanks is installed. It looks for moduleID = fuelSwitch which is given by Nertea's mods. The reason this is in RR Companon is because Companion's purpose is to contain all the invasive part patching stuff.

 

8 hours ago, Charle_Roger said:

Next, I feel like I keep asking this but I'm still unsure, what's up with liquids vs. gases in RR? The templates for atmospheres, exospheres and oceans all use liquids but surfaces use gases, while stars seem to have an odd mix. Right now I just patch all the gases into liquids but I want to understand what's actually going on in RR.

Kerbalism's crustal drills go for gases. Crustal drilling is pretty important but currently I don't want to interfere with that. It's arguably not worth the effort because any of the ices can just as well be grabbed from atmo and ocean which are catered to with liquid resources and I do well to at least popularize atmo harvesting with the MISPLACED ram scoops in RR Parts and ocean scoops in SMX (Stockalike Mining Extension). I might try changing/fighting the crustal gas resource trend at some point but I would like to have my own drill models to offer and make it worth players' while.

 

8 hours ago, Charle_Roger said:

Anything going on with Carbon in RR? It shows up a couple of times commented out, just wondering where you stand on that right now since I've been thinking about how Carbon might play into some later Immersive Conversion functionality.

Nothing yet, I suppose. The point of Carbon is so it can be tanked mid-process between the Carbon n-Oxides and Methane (or, primarily, after it's broken off from CO2 to make O2 for breathing) and that it can indeed be used for some niche process that asks for it. I've had a vision for the production (through EL) of lightweight? and very strong structural parts that primarily consist of Graphene or other Carbon allotropes.

SandCastle is evolving to become a complete alternative to EL and is provoking me to introduce a Factorio-like gameplay loop through it: To print parts requires stackable interim parts which represent packets of resources and not require the target part's weight in resources. This is aimed at producing parts in certain upper size classes where mass begins to lose value as a balance point.

 

8 hours ago, Charle_Roger said:

Have you ever thought about how to consolidate Space Dust with RR atmospheres and exospheres? I love Space Dust's scanning and harvesting systems, but I don't love that they are separate to the usual PLANETARY_RESOURCE system. It would be nice to connect them somehow.

I've thought about it but Space Dust is among the mods I didn't bother to get deep into with playtesting. The main things are the extra tedium that I have to work out to make a template system for it and that the only options for heights/altitudes are in meters and there's no option to normalize (make ranges into 0 ~ 1). This means the configs will break quickly when the planets are rescaled. What does attract me, though, is that it escapes from a savage stock bug and I would like for stars to have differing flavors of solar wind resources. (Doable here.)

The stock bug is: Where you expect peak abundance you get 0. Where abundance should be 0 it becomes infinite. This happens because a star's radius or a function thereof, exceeds some unknown threshold so the calculations break.

 

9 hours ago, Charle_Roger said:

And finally, still no luck using ModuleResourceHarvester in B9PartSwitch, maybe you can help. Here's a simplified case where I try to add a Water option to all drills:

At a glance I can say that you don't want to try changing the same parameter ( DATA{ } --> ResourceName ) that you're using to identify the module ( INDENTIFIER { } --> ResourceName ). I recommend inserting some other key to use as the identifier. Also, if you have System Heat and all its extras you want to target ModuleSystemHeatResourceHarvester, not ModuleResourceHarvester.

[Charle_Roger]

Thanks once again for your help.

 

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

The reason this is in RR Companon is because Companion's purpose is to contain all the invasive part patching stuff.

I suppose this does make sense, but it still seems odd to me that RR Squad used alone actually only gives top-level changes to mod parts. Well this is good to know anyway, I'll provide my own equivalent tank switching which is disabled when RR is expected to be doing the same thing.

 

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Kerbalism's crustal drills go for gases. Crustal drilling is pretty important but currently I don't want to interfere with that. It's arguably not worth the effort because any of the ices can just as well be grabbed from atmo and ocean which are catered to with liquid resources and I do well to at least popularize atmo harvesting with the MISPLACED ram scoops in RR Parts and ocean scoops in SMX (Stockalike Mining Extension). I might try changing/fighting the crustal gas resource trend at some point but I would like to have my own drill models to offer and make it worth players' while.

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I've thought about it but Space Dust is among the mods I didn't bother to get deep into with playtesting. The main things are the extra tedium that I have to work out to make a template system for it and that the only options for heights/altitudes are in meters and there's no option to normalize (make ranges into 0 ~ 1). This means the configs will break quickly when the planets are rescaled. What does attract me, though, is that it escapes from a savage stock bug and I would like for stars to have differing flavors of solar wind resources. (Doable here.)

You're right that atmosphere harvesting makes the most sense, if you have an atmosphere available of course. To that end Immersive Conversion strongly recommends the use of SpaceDust, since I think it is overall a better system and I might even make some harvesters using it. This will probably require me making a load of Space Dust resource distributions which I'll try to align with RR, though the heights being in metres is unfortunate.

I'll take your word for it that surface gases is a trend (I've never encountered it), but will continue to patch them into liquids if Kerbalism is not present since literally any other mod I've played with would rather deal with the liquids. Kerbalism patches so many other mods I'm scared to even try it with Immersive Conversion, compatibility will be tough and is not really a priority for me.

 

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Nothing yet, I suppose. The point of Carbon is so it can be tanked mid-process between the Carbon n-Oxides and Methane (or, primarily, after it's broken off from CO2 to make O2 for breathing) and that it can indeed be used for some niche process that asks for it. I've had a vision for the production (through EL) of lightweight? and very strong structural parts that primarily consist of Graphene or other Carbon allotropes.

SandCastle is evolving to become a complete alternative to EL and is provoking me to introduce a Factorio-like gameplay loop through it: To print parts requires stackable interim parts which represent packets of resources and not require the target part's weight in resources. This is aimed at producing parts in certain upper size classes where mass begins to lose value as a balance point.

I didn't have any purpose for Carbon initially, but now I've been thinking about carbothermic processes like the production of Silicon and smelting ores, with a higher energy electric arc furnace as alternative. I don't think Extraplanetary Launchpads' LFO-fuelled smelters have any place in Immersive Conversion, so I like the idea of carbon-fired vs. electric options.

Carbon as a construction material is a great idea, I've actually been thinking about construction resources for a while, some purpose for Rock perhaps? I will have to have a go with SandCastle, it was on my radar but haven't had a chance to really dig into it yet, sounds very promising.

 

5 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

 

At a glance I can say that you don't want to try changing the same parameter ( DATA{ } --> ResourceName ) that you're using to identify the module ( INDENTIFIER { } --> ResourceName ). I recommend inserting some other key to use as the identifier. Also, if you have System Heat and all its extras you want to target ModuleSystemHeatResourceHarvester, not ModuleResourceHarvester.

 

I'm not sure that changing ResourceName is actually an issue in this simplified case since I get the same results whether I target it or not, but might be in the more complicated case I want to eventually end up with, so I've taken that out.

It didn't occur to me that, although my patch runs before SystemHeat, the B9PartSwitch needs to target the module which will eventually be on the part, not the one which appears to be there at the time. Having corrected that I get the same behaviour whether I target ModuleSystemHeatHarvester with SystemHeat installed, or ModuleResourceHarvester without it.

 

So now I'm back to where I was before (example attempt at adding a Rock subtype):

• Part switch works to switch between the two module subtypes
• Each subtype produces the correct resource and has the right harvester name, indicating that ResourceName and ConverterName have been patched 
• The button label still reads "Start/Stop Surface Harvester" on both subtypes, indicating that StartActionName and StopActionName have not been patched
• The rate still says "Ore rate", so maybe ResourceName hasn't been patched entirely correctly after all

 

I've also tried setting up all the modules up front and disabling them via part switch. This looks like it's working in the VAB and before the drill is deployed, but then is still not quite right when operational:

• Produced resource and rate + harvester text are correct
• Deploying the drill adds rate + harvester text and a start button for all the other modules which are meant to be disabled
• Clicking the extra start button activates the drills animation, which then can't be stopped, but doesn't do anything else and the button still reads with the start text

 

It really seems that B9PartSwitch just can't do ModuleResourceHarvester properly, but both of these attempts seem to be pretty close so I still have some hope, just no idea where to go from here.

Edited July 25 by Charle_Roger

[RKunze]

1 hour ago, Charle_Roger said:

It really seems that B9PartSwitch just can't do ModuleResourceHarvester properly, but both of these attempts seem to be pretty close so I still have some hope, just no idea where to go from here.

If the only problem left is patching the labels to show the correct resource, how about changing the labels with a standard MM patch to something generic like "extraction rate", "start harvesting" and "stop harvesting" and just leave them alone in the part switch config?

Edit: Forget that, I didn't read your description correctly.

As a wild guess for why patching the labels may fail: Could that be some interaction with the i18n system?

Edited July 25 by RKunze

[Charle_Roger]

30 minutes ago, RKunze said:

If the only problem left is patching the labels to show the correct resource, how about changing the labels with a standard MM patch to something generic like "extraction rate", "start harvesting" and "stop harvesting" and just leave them alone in the part switch config?

Edit: Forget that, I didn't read your description correctly.

As a wild guess for why patching the labels may fail: Could that be some interaction with the i18n system?

Actually it is possible to set up your proposed solution, with small modifications, which will work for this simplified case. The issue is I want each part switch subtype to have multiple harvesting modules, so the resources of the buttons and rates have to be distinguished.

I don't think it has anything to do with localisation, my prototype patch should be overriding all that and just inserting plain text.

[Charle_Roger]

On 7/23/2024 at 12:16 PM, Charle_Roger said:

I think either way will leave people wondering why they can't just use LqdOxygen in their rockets, but maybe those people should be playing with RealFuels so they can.

Idea: every single bipropellant engine can be switched (before launch) from using Oxidizer to LqdOxygen, for a moderate mass increase and a significant cost increase, for that sweet sweet 20% ISP boost. Stock chemical rockets only reach into the mid 300s and even Nertea's Cryogenic Engines don't get as high as real chemical rockets, and LqdOxygen of course comes with its own difficulties, being cryogenic (will boil off) and slightly less dense than Oxidizer (will require larger tanks), so I think it should balance nicely.

I've been thinking about rocket engines more generally, ones that burn ammonia or carbon monoxide, as a later Immersive Conversion extension which pairs nicely with Cryogenic Engines.

I initially dismissed CO as an unnecessary complication, but the more I think about it it just adds so much more diversity to the resource conversion chains. I don't want to overdo it, but right now more resource conversions and more uses for the non-stock resources sounds great.

Edited July 25 by Charle_Roger

[JadeOfMaar]

You see it. The reason RR caters for LqdCO (as I bet you've noticed in RR Squad's fuel switch for engines that are also tanks) is that I was introduced to the idea that CO+Lox rocketry, though it loses a bit on Isp ( by 5 ~ 10%? ), it comes really cheap if you're going to operate on planets with moderate gravity and CO2 atmosphere. Eve's atmo becomes much more of a utility for ascent vehicles which can then refuel themselves through just hoovering the air and running electrolysis. Forget about drilling and the complex chem chains after that.

Spoiler

On the side: Eve itself could do with less gravity then CO+Lox could really shine there. You'd think that planet is full of Lead, not Iron, since it's so much wider and so much more massive than Kerbin.

I'm uninformed about Ammonia+Lox rocketry so I can't comment. But I at least have a foot in the door with Ammonia nuclear thermal.

[Charle_Roger]

14 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

 I'm uninformed about Ammonia+Lox rocketry so I can't comment.

The X-15 was powered by a rocket engine burning liquid ammonia and LOX, so there is some precedent, but the reasons it was useful at the time are not really applicable to KSP.

Ammonia doesn't give spectacular performance, but doesn't need to be kept that cold, is very stable, and is between the densities of liquid methane and kerosene, so I still think it could serve a LiquidFuel-like niche in an environment where you don't have access to LiquidFuel but can readily get hold of ammonia e.g. from a gas giant.

[JadeOfMaar]

I imagine that Ammonia could catch on pretty quickly in a mostly ice planet system with RR. There are at least two planet packs where the homeworld is an ice planet.

[Charle_Roger]

18 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

But I at least have a foot in the door with Ammonia nuclear thermal.

Forgot to mention, but I did have a go with RR Nuclear Family and I like the idea of a scale of decreasing isp for increasing thrust with alternative propellants, particularly ammonia and methane (though I don't know the science there, lower mass molecules in the exhaust typically means higher thrust). I didn't really see the point of the oxidating agents (and nitrogen) though, they just seem too low isp to be useful for how massive the engines are, and splitting them all into two clones seems like an unnecessary complication for compatability.

This is the sort of thing I'd like to have going on with Immersive Conversion though. Lots of alternative uses and methods of production for the core set of ~10 liquid chemicals.

Edited July 26 by Charle_Roger

[JadeOfMaar]

Yeah the oxidating agent engines (and Nitrogen) are really questionable. But they exist because I had a strong desire to provide for Mars CO2 propulsion techniques and that the cores for these need different or extra protection in case the Oxygen dissociates and decides to attack it. They also exist because I was already into high thrust NTP and was looking for (without knowing yet) the whole thermal nozzle thing where huge thrust can offset the loss in Isp. I really should have not bothered to make engines be cloned for it.

24 minutes ago, Charle_Roger said:

This is the sort of thing I'd like to have going on with Immersive Conversion though. Lots of alternative uses and methods of production for the core set of ~10 liquid chemicals.

It's rather fulfilling to provide all that, particularly for propulsion.

On 7/21/2024 at 5:02 PM, Charle_Roger said:

I was planning on just having those reskinned Convert-O-Trons until the mod was basically fully functional, but I couldn't help myself, so here's a chemical reactor.

Parts are fun to make, I'm actually semi-tempted to divide the chemical reactor further. If I do, it will probably be a tech level separation, like maybe this 2.5m reactor gives you water electrolysis, sabatier and haber processes, monopropellant production etc, but a more advanced 3.75m reactor additionally allows combustion process with Oxidizer or pyrolitic processes like turning LqdMethane into Organics. Processing Organics into Polymers or LiquidFuel likewise could be handled by a separate part. I don't want to overdo it with parts, but I don't want to end up with one converter operating an even wider array of recipes than the old Convert-O-Trons, since the whole point is to make something more immersive.

(You may not have made it known in this post but still relevant: ) I also have plans to drop a curious number of refineries into the part catalogue and for them to have variants tied to selections of recipes. I haven't yet written and tested any of the configs necessary that I'll know if my plan can work out but I can tell you that I'll be using the Omniconverter module from the WBI mods. (It's the same kind as the swappable recipe modules in MKS and Kerbalism.) If it does not respond to B9PS as I hope, I'll have to flood the catalogue just as you fear you have to with the stock and stock-ish drills.

Spoiler

My models for 1.25m and 2.5m. The "inserts" in them can be made into different combinations to make specialty variant models.

 

[Charle_Roger]

  

5 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I also have plans to drop a curious number of refineries into the part catalogue and for them to have variants tied to selections of recipes. I haven't yet written and tested any of the configs necessary that I'll know if my plan can work out but I can tell you that I'll be using the Omniconverter module from the WBI mods. (It's the same kind as the swappable recipe modules in MKS and Kerbalism.) If it does not respond to B9PS as I hope, I'll have to flood the catalogue just as you fear you have to with the stock and stock-ish drills.

I've also been thinking about this kind of recipe switching, I didn't know about the Omniconverter module but that sounds pretty much like what I was imagining. I don't want to end up with a flood of parts, but having to put a separate electrolytic separator and sabatier reactor on your craft, and having them look slightly different, would be much more interesting that just one chemical reactor capable of everything.

[Charle_Roger]

I didn't like the idea that all these new chemicals would just be shoved into the stock fuel tanks with a big list of part switch subtypes, with chemical factories left to store everything in rocket fuel tanks. CryoTanks has a fairly limited set too, the largest of which can cost a lot of power to fight against boiloff depending what's in there.

Immersive Conversion won't patch fuel tanks with part switch variants for any liquid resources unless they are propellants (e.g. possible CO+O engines in the future). Instead, a more bespoke solution:

Spoiler

These specialised tanks are decently heavier than the ones you build rockets out of, but have much slower boiloff rates, so are ideal for long-term static storage of individual cryogenic liquids. They come in 1.25m, 2.5m, 5m and 10m sizes for any scale of chemical processing you could dream up. The largest ones are primarily intended to be assembled on-site, though I'm interested to see how easy it is to get a 40x10m empty cylinder into space.

These are built from a handful of subcomponent models which all use the same texture, composed using stock part variants, for a total of four parts each with seven variants. I have some extra details to add to these tanks and I'll work a bit more on the texture, and at some point I'll make some even bigger spherical tanks too. It might also be nice to offer some simple texture switching between a couple of pale colours.

Edited July 30 by Charle_Roger

[Lonelykermit]

7 hours ago, Charle_Roger said:

I didn't like the idea that all these new chemicals would just be shoved into the stock fuel tanks with a big list of part switch subtypes, with chemical factories left to store everything in rocket fuel tanks. CryoTanks has a fairly limited set too, the largest of which can cost a lot of power to fight against boiloff depending what's in there.

Immersive Conversion won't patch fuel tanks with part switch variants for any liquid resources unless they are propellants (e.g. possible CO+O engines in the future). Instead, a more bespoke solution:

These specialised tanks are decently heavier than the ones you build rockets out of, but have much slower boiloff rates, so are ideal for long-term static storage of individual cryogenic liquids. They come in 1.25m, 2.5m, 5m and 10m sizes for any scale of chemical processing you could dream up. The largest ones are primarily intended to be assembled on-site, though I'm interested to see how easy it is to get a 40x10m empty cylinder into space.

These are built from a handful of subcomponent models which all use the same texture, composed using stock part variants, for a total of four parts each with seven variants. I have some extra details to add to these tanks and I'll work a bit more on the texture, and at some point I'll make some even bigger spherical tanks too. It might also be nice to offer some simple texture switching between a couple of pale colours.

If you're intending to have a tank for each "size", you may have forgotten 3.75m tanks. 

[Charle_Roger]

10 minutes ago, Lonelykermit said:

If you're intending to have a tank for each "size", you may have forgotten 3.75m tanks. 

If I include 3.75m I feel I should also do 1.875m and 7.5m. I don't think these are particularly necessary for the purpose, but they will be easy to add if I ever see a good enough reason.

Edited July 28 by Charle_Roger

[Charle_Roger]

A more detailed view of the first texturing pass.

Spoiler

Edited July 30 by Charle_Roger

[Charle_Roger]

I sometimes found that CryoTanks' 10m diameter spherical tank was a bit small for some applications, I'd end up with like 16 of them on a big interstellar ship, so here's a 20m Horton sphere. All these tanks have part switch variants with/without the base mounting, as well as two sizes of stack mounting at the top and bottom.

Spoiler

Edited July 30 by Charle_Roger

[Charle_Roger]

I've decided Oxidizer should actually be treated as dinitrogen tetroxide or something similar for realism and gameplay reasons, would be curious to hear what people think of it.

This is part of a broader overhaul to Oxidizer which reconfigures cryogenic rockets to use LqdOxygen:

On 7/15/2024 at 2:35 AM, Charle_Roger said:

Oxidizer overhaul

Immersive Conversion assumes Oxidizer to be dinitrogen tetroxide or nitric acid or something similar for the following reasons:

• It's stable (when tanked).
• It's non-cryogenic.
• It burns with a ~1.2 mixture ratio with LiquidFuel (assumed to be kerosene).
• It's slightly more involved to produce than pure oxygen, so adds some gameplay complexity.

Kerosene and NTO is an unconventional but not unprecedented mix which should produce roughly the range of ISPs seen in the game. For Kerbalism players, this will be patched to represent high-test peroxide instead, despite the mixture ratio being way off.

LqdOxygen is introduced as a separate oxidiser which is simpler to produce but harder to handle, since it's cryogenic, and has a more limited use in cryogenic engines. The following changes are applied involving Nertea's CryoTanks and Cryogenic Engines:

• All tanks that allow Oxidizer will also allow LqdOxygen, requiring boiloff prevention.
• Fuel-oxidiser mixes in CryoTanks and CryoEngines are changed from using Oxidizer to LqdOxygen
  • Hydrolox volumetric ratio is retained at 3/1, yielding a more realistic mass ratio of 5.37 vs. the original 4.70
  • Methalox volumetric ratio is changed from 5/3 to 9/7, yielding a more realistic mass ratio of 3.45 vs. the original 3.92.
• Due to the above changes giving cryogenic rockets some well-needed competitive advantages, the LqdHydrogen packing density has been changed to its actual physical density (CryoTanks natively packs 1.5x as much hydrogen into its tanks as it should for gameplay balance reasons).

Edited July 30 by Charle_Roger

[Xt007]

54 minutes ago, Charle_Roger said:

I've decided Oxidizer should actually be treated as dinitrogen tetroxide for realism and gameplay reasons, would be curious to hear what people think of it.

Seems reasonable to me.  Not going with LOX does fit more in line with stock gameplay of a simple overarching oxidizer.  For realism then NT0 makes sense since both Soviet and American hypergolic rockets used NTO.  Although if you're doing this it makes sense to me to change liquid fuel (one for planes and another for rockets) since there never was a rocket that used kerosene and NTO that left the launch pad. 

Edited July 30 by Xt007

[Charle_Roger]

 

40 minutes ago, Xt007 said:

Although if you're doing this it makes sense to me to change liquid fuel (one for planes and another for rockets) since there never was a rocket that used kerosene and NTO that left the launch pad. 

You're right, it is pretty weird to have as the basic fuel mix, but I'm going to end up reinventing RealFuels if I'm not careful, which is not the goal. Any more sensible fuel to pair with NTO would require nitrogen to produce and blurs the line between LiquidFuel and MonoPropellant. LiquidFuel being kerosene is pretty universally agreed upon, much more so than the identity of Oxidizer, and I don't want to overhaul the functioning of every stock engine.

I think I'm content with requiring ammonia and oxygen to produce Oxidizer, leaving the exact chemical pretty ambiguous given the inputs, unless you want to run the numbers and figure out you're making something consisting of one part N to two parts O.

Kerosene/NTO is a perfectly viable combination which actually did fly a couple of times on one of the most Kerbal rocket system ever designed, so I think it fits.

Edited July 30 by Charle_Roger

[Lonelykermit]

Have you playtested the new fuel changes? 

[Xt007]

Thank you for teaching me something! @Charle_Roger

 

[Charle_Roger]

7 hours ago, Lonelykermit said:

Have you playtested the new fuel changes? 

Not completely, it will be a long time before all the resources conversions are probably balanced (gameplay-wise, not chemistry-wise), but LqdOxygen in the cryogenic engines plays great imo.

6 hours ago, Xt007 said:

Thank you for teaching me something!

It's a fun little bit of rocketry history, OTRAG even briefly had the late Von Braun working for them.

Edited July 30 by Charle_Roger

[Charle_Roger]

I think I'm pretty much finished refining the modelling and texturing of the tanks, now I just need to put it all together into actual parts. The largest tanks have stiffener rings in their surface configuration so they look a bit more interesting than just a big uniform sphere:

Spoiler

Now that the scope of this mod has increased, I think I'll release it as a series of mods similar to Nertea's Near Future suite, the first of which will be the tanks. Immersive Conversion is not quite a general enough name, so I might go with IC Tanks/Drills/Converters/Smelters/etc, IC Technologies as a whole, where IC could stand for Industrial Chemistry or ISRU Complication or whatever you like, but it is a bit more bland.

Edited August 1 by Charle_Roger