RLA Stockalike v10 released 11th August

[hoojiwana]

Hey Flanders, nice to see you again.

I made a little GIF of some of the different stages of the Xenon tanks design. Not terribly relevant but might be interesting.

Here's the design stacked up in a probe with over 11 hours of Xenon propellent.

That design looked a little bit spindly to me so I beefed up the truss segments around it a little bit. Here's one with a Resistojet. The texture is also slightly different, and a slightly improved specular map. Now I've gotten specular mapping figured out I'm going to re-add the shine that used to be on the Arcjet nozzles.

[Scotius]

Do you have any plans to make bigger electrical engines? Like Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster or VASIMR?

[hoojiwana]

Those things are exactly what I'm going to be making for a future EE update. The current plan is to add six MPD engines, two types for each of the three stock part sizes. One type will produce more thrust, but will require more energy to run. Essentially there will be applied-field MPDs and self-field MPDs. Their thrust will be somewhere around the LV-N, with ISP in the thousands. To offset that, the power requirements will be massive, though quite how massive I've not yet determined. I need to have a play about with stats to figure out something cool. As for VASIMR, I would like to do something like that, but it would require a plugin to do. Apparently a plugin to toggle between "gears" is fairly easy to write so I may do it myself.

Before those however, I still need to get what I'm working on finished and out for download. The Xenon tanks in particular are a step towards the MPDs, since you're still going to need a lot of propellent to run them. They may have high ISP but having 160 times the thrust of the Ion means they're going to consume the Xenon an awful lot quicker. Something to work out in stats though. I'll probably also change the stock Xenon resource so it doesn't draw from all tanks simultaneously and draws like liquid fuel and oxidiser. That would allow you to use Xenon asparagus or drop tanks, assuming I'm not actually wrong and stock Xenon already works like that of course.

[Scotius]

If Wiki article is accurate, you could safely go with thrust in low 200-ish for big MPDs. It seems high for an electric thruster, but KSP engine does not make life easy for people wanting to use those. I, for one don't want to babysit my ships during 30 minutes burns

[hoojiwana]

Yeah the 2.5m one will probably be closer to that. I don't want to replace the LV-N, which there is a real danger of doing, I want to provide an alternative to it. Getting the balance just right is going to be a tough thing to pull off.

[Scotius]

Weight and power requirements seems like logical way to counter OP-ness of engines. I'm glad to hear there will be a powerful, huge engine for my interplanetary cruisers It should cut down count part, since i won't have to install clusters of LV-Ns to get any serious thrust.

[hoojiwana]

Well with all the stock solar panels you'll need part count may be a bit of an issue, so I'm also going to make generators and bigger solar panels to power the engines. The MPD's are a ways off yet, I would like to have all the other parts made so you don't have to rely on a rocket made out of Gigantors that can't do anything in a planetary shadow.

Though if you wanted some big efficient engines that are balanced go have a look at Nucleonics Ltd. Some nice nuclear engines there.

Edited June 16, 2013 by hoojiwana

[Scotius]

I do have this pack, but still for some reason i prefer plasma engines. Maybe it's because of distinct lack of radiation around the ship?

[hoojiwana]

Well, that might still be a problem if you have to attach a nuclear reactor so you can do an interplanetary burn in Kerbins shadow to go off to Jool.

EDIT: Here's the double-size Xenon tank:

The shininess isn't quite the same in-game as on the Sketchfab model though.

Edited June 16, 2013 by hoojiwana

[hoojiwana]

Electric Engines 0.6 is now available on Spaceport. Check out the first post for more information and some pictures!

[Kommitz]

Those Xenon tanks really round out the pack, makes building slightly large probes much more feasible now. Plus the models look nice for what they are.

[hoojiwana]

Thanks Kommitz, I spent a fair while getting them looking as they did, and just as long working out the specular textures! They also mostly use the 0.20 texture sharing, which is pretty fantastic to use once I figured it out.

[astropapi1]

Oh God... Smoke generators! I just needed those!

Downloading your RLA Stockalike pack right now.

[hoojiwana]

Unfortunately their smoke effect runs out pretty quick, so you can't really so any proper sky writing. Custom FX could possibly alleviate that, I'm not sure.

Have fun with them though!

[hoojiwana]

After a short break after EE 0.6, I'm back to making parts again, and this time it's the start of a brand new pack that was hinted at further up the page. Here's a look at the work-in-progress ASRG:

Now my version is a quite a lot bigger than NASA's, and it's not really going to be more efficient. RLA scientists may have secretly just stuffed the box full of MMRTG's and claim it has better efficiency, so it is currently rated at the same mass and output as six stock RTG's. The overall plan for the Power Generation pack is to provide more power generation options for whatever purpose you need boatloads of power for. Since the current stock game doesn't have much that requires significant amounts of power, you may be stuck with using up all that juice with mods like Kethane, or my own Electric Engines. So what will the pack contain? The MMRTG will be moved across into it, the ASRG posted above, some stackable nuclear generators, medium sized solar panels, some really quite big solar panels, and possibly some ridiculously huge solar panels. To store all of that there will also be high-density batteries, essentially twice the mass and storage of the stock ones in roughly the same size part.

Now, to balance the Nuclear Generators, and to perhaps make the RTG's more interesting, I'm planning to have them all run on a new resource called Blutonium Oxide, and maybe have the RTG's provide (effective) power for something like fifteen years, and the bigger generators would last five or less. I'm also considering making them refuelable with the Kethane plugin by adding an ore version of the resource which can be refined and enriched with oxidiser to enable long term power. It wouldn't be terribly realistic, but it's better than creating a whole line of parts and resources to get to the fuel for the generators. That means I might be making a drill, converter and possibly a scanner as well. Plenty to do!

I'm also doing a little update to Stockalike to take advantage of the 0.20 texture sharing now that I have it figured out, and to redo the folders. I'm considering removing the Inline Avionics from any future versions since 0.21 seems to be making it obsolete. I may wait until 0.21 actually comes out to do that though, I'm not sure. Thoughts?

[Scotius]

Sounds god to me More power is good. Especially on kethane rig. Will ASRGs be modular like your RTGs?

[hoojiwana]

Finished the little update to Stockalike. Not much to see there, just some folder and texture updates. I have also added a little explanation of why using 45 degree RCS can be helpful to the imgur album as well.

Will ASRGs be modular like your RTGs?

It wouldn't make much sense from an internal point of view based on the real ASRG, but why not? It would be a pretty easy thing to do considering that the part is just 3 cubes stacked on top of each other, and I could use the same texture as well. Balance would be easy, just have it be equivalent to two RTGs. What would I call it though?

[Mekan1k]

CRTG's: Cubic Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators

[Lazurkri]

Sounds god to me More power is good. Especially on kethane rig. Will ASRGs be modular like your RTGs?

*snicker* I see a humorous typo...

Also, about the RTGs and them having a "Life span" would you make it so they just "Die" at the end of their operational life or would that be the time to when they start returning less energy? because certain probes and satellites and junk have been up in space for a lot longer than 15 years using RTG's and they still work... things like the Voyager probes comes to mind...

[Scotius]

*snicker* I see a humorous typo...

Also, about the RTGs and them having a "Life span" would you make it so they just "Die" at the end of their operational life or would that be the time to when they start returning less energy? because certain probes and satellites and junk have been up in space for a lot longer than 15 years using RTG's and they still work... things like the Voyager probes comes to mind...

Ow. *facepalm* Yeah, sometimes i do that "eating letters" thing. But if it amuses you...njoy

[hoojiwana]

I've been looking at the particle system that the recent 0.6 Kethane update include, and asked Majiir about how well it would work with engines, so this little picture here might have some future relevance to the Electric Engines pack!

CRTG's: Cubic Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators

Good idea with the cubic. I've gone with CSRG; Cubic Sterling Radioisotope Generator. And here it is!

Also, about the RTGs and them having a "Life span" would you make it so they just "Die" at the end of their operational life or would that be the time to when they start returning less energy?

Indeed, real life RTG's create less electrical power as the nuclear fuel source radiates less alpha particles. I think this would require a plugin of some sort to work correctly. It seems simple enough that I could probably do it, though my coding experience is minimal at best and I wouldn't know where to start. If anyone made a plugin that could do that, along with perhaps an ISP/thrust gear changer and something that allowed fuel mixtures for RCS thrusters, then I would happily give it a go and include it.

[Scotius]

Oh, i like those exhaust plumes Could you add one looking like a sphere of red or blue glow, with glow intensity increasing with throttle?

[CrazyIvan]

Amazing engines man! Could we possibly get a JIMO like nuclear power reactor from you? You make great designs! Also if you need a beta tester I would glad to help out!

[hoojiwana]

Two updates tonight, the first was to the MMRTG to update its texture, and to bring its folder structure inline since it is also included in the new Power Generation pack that you can go download right now! There's not much in it besides the SRGs that you've already seen since I'm working on getting solar panels to function, and there wasn't a point having them just sat on my hard drive doing nothing.

Oh, i like those exhaust plumes Could you add one looking like a sphere of red or blue glow, with glow intensity increasing with throttle?

What engine would that be for? I can't get the FX in game just yet since I need a small plugin to make the Kethane particle system function with engine throttle on non-Kethane parts. It's not a huge problem though, Majiir will either add that himself at some point, or stock KSP will have custom FX added.

Amazing engines man! Could we possibly get a JIMO like nuclear power reactor from you? You make great designs! Also if you need a beta tester I would glad to help out!

That's exactly what the coming updates to the Power Generation pack will include, and possibly even some HiPEP-like designs for Electric Engines. If you want to test anything I tend to put up stable updates on Spaceport, so go download it, break it, and report back!

[scottholio]

Nice. Downloaded and using already. Really enjoy your mods, keep up the good work man