TAC Fuel Balancer-DISCONTINUED

[SchroedingersHat]

Hey, personally I dont mind having to place a part to enable the balancer - you know - KSP actually lacks reasons to plant scientific parts.

Agreed, it's good to have it require a part because sometimes you want fewer mods cluttering up the gui. Also if you have many installed loading all of them on every ship can be taxing on your system. For those of us who really want fewer parts sometimes we can combine all the mod bits into one super-mod-bit

[TaranisElsu]

Another preview of the TAC Fuel Balancer version 2.0!

New features:

• Added sensible default window sizes. Note that all of my windows are resizable.
  
• The Lock feature is now linked with the flow state on the part (in the part's right click menu).
  
• Disabled if out of power or the vessel is not "controllable". (Sorry, no integration with RemoteTech. I will have to look at that later.)
  
• Some bug fixes!
  

This is still very much a work in progress.

Completely uninstall the old version before installing this.

Download from https://www.dropbox.com/s/tlvanj0jd6mdlss/TacFuelBalancer_pre-2.0.b.zip

Please let me know if you tried it out, and whether you had any issues. Also send me suggestions for improvements.

@Audiopulse and SchroedingersHat -- sorry but while I agree with you, you have been outvoted.

Thanks!

[neurotoxin]

@Audiopulse and SchroedingersHat -- sorry but while I agree with you, you have been outvoted.

Thanks!

To be honest, I don't care either way. It IS nice that I don't have to suffer any of those, "CRAP! I forgot the fuel balancer!" moments when building orbital bases or w/e but at the same time I like a minimal GUI.

[Gaius]

I did notice that if you still have parts with the old MODULE { name = TacFuelBalancer } in their config (as my command pods all did), it still puts the "Show Fuel Balancer" button in the right-click menu, but it doesn't work. I prefer the new partless interface anyway, but I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to support both methods: if there's a part on the current vessel that has the interface, don't draw the button so people don't have a cluttered UI if they don't like that button always being there -- but if no part has the interface, put the button up so the fuel balancer is still accessible? Not sure if that's even possible but if it is, it would basically give you the best of both worlds, and people can either use the part or not as they prefer...

[ZobrAA]

Looking very nice! Waitind for 2.0 release to replace balancer v1 in my main game

[scottholio]

I'm really enjoying using this mod, the new partless system is much better for me because I was always forgetting to put one on my ships. As a side note, I was able to use this with a RemoteTech controlled vessel with no problems, maybe because it also had Mechjeb installed?

Anyway, keep up the good work

[Eleven]

/tagging this thread for later. I think this mod is what I'm looking for. I have an asparagus style tug, and in order to extend the use of all my engines I manually transfer fuel from the central tank to the outside first stage tanks to prevent them from emptying out and dropping off but I never get the fuel levels exact in each of those outside tanks. So, when they do run dry, one always runs out first and my craft goes off course because one engine stopped before it's opposite did.

[Gristle]

/tagging this thread for later. I think this mod is what I'm looking for. I have an asparagus style tug, and in order to extend the use of all my engines I manually transfer fuel from the central tank to the outside first stage tanks to prevent them from emptying out and dropping off but I never get the fuel levels exact in each of those outside tanks. So, when they do run dry, one always runs out first and my craft goes off course because one engine stopped before it's opposite did.

Why wouldn't you just reverse the fuel line to the tank/engines you want to keep operating?

[Castun]

Yeah, if you're running asparagus staging you WANT those outer tanks to run out so you can shed the dead weight. If you don't want to shed those outer tanks, just change how your fuel lines are setup so they all draw evenly, and then you can use TAC FB to balance the fuel automatically.

[Eleven]

Why wouldn't you just reverse the fuel line to the tank/engines you want to keep operating?

Never thought of that! Although I don't always want to do what I described above, my last mission I didn't want to lose the dV so I kept refilling the first stages

Yeah, if you're running asparagus staging you WANT those outer tanks to run out so you can shed the dead weight. If you don't want to shed those outer tanks, just change how your fuel lines are setup so they all draw evenly, and then you can use TAC FB to balance the fuel automatically.

Yah, I get that, but I was already doing 8-9 minute burns, didn't want them becoming longer with less engines...again on this mission specifically. Normally this tug is setup to operate like any other asparagus craft.

[Smurfalot]

Sorry if this has been addressed somewhere that I did not see. Does this mod also balance electrical load between multiple batteries?

[TaranisElsu]

Sorry if this has been addressed somewhere that I did not see. Does this mod also balance electrical load between multiple batteries?

Yes, it can balance or transfer any resource except things like solid rocket fuel, for obvious reasons

[mereman]

Been using this mod for a week or so. and it's great saving me so much time and effort (trying to click on the correct tank).

So it's a big thanks from me another must have mod.

[Smurfalot]

Yes, it can balance or transfer any resource except things like solid rocket fuel, for obvious reasons

Thank you very much for the reply.

[Smurfalot]

This looks like a great mod, I am seriously considering adding it to my game. I was about to download, but wanted to check with you first to see if a new release is expected in the next couple of days, if so I will just wait for that. I am not trying to rush you or anything, I truely appreciate the effort involved in keeping your suite of mods up to date.

[DChurchill]

This mod is great on any ship with any complexity in fuel/RCS tankage. Expecially multi-part ships and command/lander configurations.

[Free Trader Beowulf]

Great update for a great mod. Some comments:

I really like the ability to resize the window and the new part-less implementation. Both save me a lot of hassle, I always seemed to end up searching for that black box during orbital night, which wasn't fun.

I like the x10 button and the ability to dump fuel, both have proved quite useful.

I'm not so keen on the new interface, specifically the fact you have to click twice per tank to access the different functions. I'd prefer the in, out and lock functions to be available as separate buttons next to the tank name. The other functions I don't mind clicking twice for.

I would like to see an "all stop" button to reset everything across all the different fuel types after a session of shunting fuel about. Also, and this is really pretty minor, the ability to dump excess oxidiser or fuel if the two get out of sync, like when you run a jet engine from an LFO tank.

But anyway, great mod, thanks for your hard work.

[Climberfx]

Why ti won't save the state of my ship? will be that feature in 2.0?

[tfm]

I love the mod, it is very handy, but a few notes.

My two biggest issues with the latest version are:

1. Separate Liquid & Oxidizer. I've been bit so many times by having taken some from one tank and some from another and then finding myself lacking one side of the mixture. It would be fantastic if we could have a tab that does BOTH automatically.

2. The icon likes to move instead of click if you click on it with ANY mouse movement. Can't you make it move only when in settings mode or something?

3. Highlighting. If you don't manually turn it off it stays on. It would be nice if it turned off all highlighting when you closed the panel.

Something I would love to see:

Right now it shows you all the tanks. If you are on a space station this can be quite daunting. It would be sweet if you could use the "Disable Cross-feed" setting in docking ports to track down what linksets are separate ships. That way you could maybe list all the ships and then be able to just work on those? Not sure if it is doable, but it would be handy to be able to group sets to work on as a group.

[draeath]

Is there a changelog from the v1.1.1 to the v2.0 pre-releases?

[John FX]

1. Separate Liquid & Oxidizer. I've been bit so many times by having taken some from one tank and some from another and then finding myself lacking one side of the mixture. It would be fantastic if we could have a tab that does BOTH automatically.

I agree

2. The icon likes to move instead of click if you click on it with ANY mouse movement. Can't you make it move only when in settings mode or something?

Can`t say I noticed this. I have noticed the icon is not always in the same place at different resolutions, it seems not to scale.

3. Highlighting. If you don't manually turn it off it stays on. It would be nice if it turned off all highlighting when you closed the panel.

I`d like the selected tank to highlight operation. If I select a tank to intake fuel I`d like it red, output fuel green and balance to be blue. then with one glance at my ship I know how it is set. (Obviously all this is changeable in options for those who do not want it)

Something I would love to see:

Right now it shows you all the tanks. If you are on a space station this can be quite daunting. It would be sweet if you could use the "Disable Cross-feed" setting in docking ports to track down what linksets are separate ships. That way you could maybe list all the ships and then be able to just work on those? Not sure if it is doable, but it would be handy to be able to group sets to work on as a group.

I`d like to group tanks. Often I want to select 4 of my 10 tanks and output from those 4 to a different 3 and have the 4 output balanced and the three input balanced. Currently I have to select each one by one so they are not balanced unless they start out at 100%.

For example one of my craft has 7 tanks, 3 engines and I want to output from the 4 spare tanks to the three with engines but remain balanced. Currently I have to start the balancing when at 100% and never switch from the craft or I have to balance manually.

That said I could not live without this mod. It s in my `cannot do without` list.

[John FX]

Why ti won't save the state of my ship? will be that feature in 2.0?

I`d also like a little config file for each ship, like mechjeb does.

[CoriW]

Hello, so I would really like to try out this mod, but I was wondering if it has compatibility with any resources, or just the stock LiquidFuel, Oxidizer, and Electricity? The reason I ask is because I've been using the Modular Fuel System mod which adds LiquidOxygen, LiquidH2, and nuclearFuel on top of the stock LiquidFuel and Oxidizer. It would probably be pretty awkward to use if it could only support 2 out of the 5 fuels I have available.

EDIT: Just finished testing and it seems it does allow me to balance any types of fuel, awesome!

Edited July 24, 2013 by CoriW

[Mechrior]

any plans to update for .21?

[Itsdavyjones]

i hope so, makes everything so much easier, but i suppose i could handle without it... if i must...