[WIP Plugin] Extraplanetary Space Centers!

[Mihara]

The plan is for the launchpad to have a docking port on the back of the cockpit. But I haven't figured out how to do that yet. So, for the meantime, since you can't attach anything to it, I enabled debug mode.

You can, it just doesn't move with it like you would expect or gets broken off when it opens, depending on where it was attached. The only locations where nothing appears to get damaged or hung out to dry are right on the very base of the launchpad, the only ones actually accessible by a kerbal afterwards are thin strips on the side of the base, just tall enough for a connector port. And you can go there and bring a connector, no problem, but it's quite cumbersome.

May I suggest making the base taller, extending the ramps appropriately, and leaving a clear pathway towards the base, about a small docking port wide? One could then either bring a cable in or drive up a rover with a tube extension or something of the sort without trying to navigate underneath.

[Mihara]

Oh, and one more bug: If the vessel the launchpad itself is a part of is classified as debris, which can happen in certain cases when normally decoupling components, the launchpad, when ordered to recycle debris, will attempt to recycle itself, succeeding, but confusing both KSP and the player.

Oh, and I hope it doublechecks whether debris contains any crew. I didn't test for it, but that would be a bit too sadistic... :-)

[skykooler]

Oh, and one more bug: If the vessel the launchpad itself is a part of is classified as debris, which can happen in certain cases when normally decoupling components, the launchpad, when ordered to recycle debris, will attempt to recycle itself, succeeding, but confusing both KSP and the player.

Oh, and I hope it doublechecks whether debris contains any crew. I didn't test for it, but that would be a bit too sadistic... :-)

Hmm...that didn't occur to me. I suppose I should add a check for whether something contains crew. This should fix the launchpad itself, because it contains two kerbals (though you can't see them because there's no IVA yet, and you can't EVA them because there's no hatch yet.)

[Mihara]

This won’t fix third-party launchpads which don't contain crew, though....

[skykooler]

This won’t fix third-party launchpads which don't contain crew, though....

If you have a launchpad, you should set its ship type to "lander" or "base" anyway. Otherwise it won't be visible in the tracking station, so it's virtually useless.

[Mihara]

If you have a launchpad, you should set its ship type to "lander" or "base" anyway. Otherwise it won't be visible in the tracking station, so it's virtually useless.

Come to think of it, that might have caused it to become debris in the first place. I still believe it'd be a better practice to make a special check to never ever attempt to recycle itself, though.

Speaking of recycling, I looked into the source and noticed that the recycler converts the entire mass of the debris into rocket parts. In my particular case, I'm working out a plan to bootstrap production from the lightest launch vehicle I can make, and the plan is that the delivery vehicle drops the launchpad, launchpad prints a crane from rocket parts brought with the delivery vehicle, which moves a freshly printed empty container for rocket parts off it, (which is problematic right now as I can't seem to print anything with sliders set to zero without having debug mode turned on, but it appears there are fixes to this end in github -- do they work? I'm not really anxious to install the entire build environment for C# to find out.), the crew connects it by KAS to the launchpad, and then recycles the entire delivery vehicle back into rocket parts, giving it a seed of parts large enough to build further components.

Well, much of the mass of the delivery vehicle is likely to be fuel at this point because I routinely overbudget on fuel. I even made arrangements in the plan to drain fuel into a separate storage tank, but according to the code, fuel will also count as part of the total mass of debris and get converted into rocket parts directly. Is that wise? This permits one to indirectly convert kethane into rocket parts... A more reasonable way would be to drain all drainable resources from debris into the launchpad's own resources and only then recycle the rest.

[Warsoul]

I made somes models for my expansion pack. I'm happy if you wanna join the Warsoul's Space Labs. We need guyz like you. Nice mod !

There a model i made in 10 minutes for you. I don't have Texture for it. If you can texture it and upload the model textured. You can use it for your mods.

Don't forget to give me credits please.

Licensing

Warsoul's Space Labs by Warsoul is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are not authorized to modify without our authorisation.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/.../3.0/legalcode

Warsoul's Space Labs Link

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/44604-Warsoul-s-Space-Labs-Under-Construction

Ask me in private for the Download.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Warsoul

[taniwha]

Mihara: They do work, though you will get some funny results (eg, 0.18u of Jet Fuel if you use a small spherical tank, and -somenumber available Jet Fuel). I've already fixed the negative availability, but not pushed the changes. The 0.18u of Jet Fuel is not a bug in EL, but rather in the spherical tank. Also, skykooler showed me a problem with my changes not finding all LFO available to the pad, but I couldn't reproduce that yet.

I haven't looked at the recycler yet, but I agree that converting fuel to rocket parts is wrong. At most, the recycler should siphon the fuel into tanks, or just dump it. I'd probably go with the latter as the recycler should be in the smelter rather than the pad, and it's really up to the user what to do with the fuel.

I like your plans. It seems you like the challenge of the low-density parts. I'm looking forward to it myself . I plan on sending just enough parts to make a workshop and maybe a few tanks, and enough metal to make a miner/smelter.

[taniwha]

Warsoul: wow, that looks cool I take it it's intended for Kerbtown (I can imagine only the craziest people trying to fly one anywhere).

I imagine it could hold a few tons of rocket parts .

[Mihara]

I'd probably go with the latter as the recycler should be in the smelter rather than the pad, and it's really up to the user what to do with the fuel.

I think it's kind of inconsistent when you can magically melt debris up to 50 meters away but to actually siphon fuel out of it you need to run a cable. You should either need cables in both cases or in neither, and I suspect both is impossible.

I like your plans. It seems you like the challenge of the low-density parts. I'm looking forward to it myself . I plan on sending just enough parts to make a workshop and maybe a few tanks, and enough metal to make a miner/smelter.

It still comes out to ~50t for the entire kit, though, not counting the booster that will get it to Jool, and that's with a small GNE launchpad for seed... Well, I could take a bit less seed parts, but that will only increase the amount of effort I need to put in at the other end.

I don't mind the low-density parts per se, though the non-availability of stock containers to match is a pain. I like spherical tanks as much as anyone else, if not more so, but when I have so many very similar looking white balls on everything, VAB kind of gets repetitive and confusing, and making too many part edits makes updates a pain. These boxes look very nice and could be prime candidates for official adoption, by the way.

[taniwha]

Those do look interesting (and more plausible for rocket parts). I agree about the texturing problem with spherical tanks. I setup a node-test "craft" of all 3 sizes of spherical tank: rocket parts, LFO, metal, ore: there's no way to tell what's what :/

Re stock parts: a modified jumbo-64 can hold 16t of rocket parts (enough to build another 4 tanks, but no attachments).

I'm still thinking about how the recycler should be done, but I'm much more interested in getting EL to work in orbit.

[Mihara]

Well, my bug report for right now is that the recycler does not seem to produce rocket parts at all.

Test case: GNE launchpad with a stack of rocket parts hexcans underneath. Unfold launchpad, select a craft (for me, attempting to load a craft containing rocket parts containers messes up the build menu, by the way -- up until you close and reopen it, selecting another craft will fail.) launch it. Reclassify it as debris, recycle. I should, in theory, get 80% of it's mass in rocket parts back, but as I can tell, it just evaporates.

P.S. Oh, and by "stock" in this case I mean "parts that come with the mod that I don't have to worry about remembering to update myself if anything changes"

[skykooler]

Well, my bug report for right now is that the recycler does not seem to produce rocket parts at all.

Test case: GNE launchpad with a stack of rocket parts hexcans underneath. Unfold launchpad, select a craft (for me, attempting to load a craft containing rocket parts containers messes up the build menu, by the way -- up until you close and reopen it, selecting another craft will fail.) launch it. Reclassify it as debris, recycle. I should, in theory, get 80% of it's mass in rocket parts back, but as I can tell, it just evaporates.

P.S. Oh, and by "stock" in this case I mean "parts that come with the mod that I don't have to worry about remembering to update myself if anything changes"

Oops. I think I forgot to update the recycling code to reflect the new densities. So, yes, recycling does work, but it's around 1% efficient rather than 80%.

[Mihara]

Oops. I think I forgot to update the recycling code to reflect the new densities. So, yes, recycling does work, but it's around 1% efficient rather than 80%.

Pretty sure it's 0.001% at best rather than 1%, otherwise the fraction recovered would get displayed in the resource as such. It doesn't.

[taniwha]

Mihara: I've decided that maybe the recycler should handle all resources and try to stash them. Any that don't have anywhere to go will just vanish, but at least not become rocket parts (or metal).

[edit]oh, and about "stock" parts: ah, yeah. EL definitely needs some storage sheds. Maybe some nice big (but light) things that are easy to build on-site. And maybe a small auger (the the current one isn't too bad) and smelter good for bootstrapping.

Edited August 11, 2013 by taniwha

[Railgunner2160]

Hmm, ZZZ made some storage containers that might fit the bill, they look like something one might actually use.....

[Tw1]

That is not part of my mod; the choose launch site button is from the KerbTown mod.

Opps, my mistake. I will seek advice there.

Also, the new pad looks great. Much more practical, good luck getting remaining issues solved.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Tw1

[taniwha]

Skykooler: I've already got recycling fixed in my local tree (full stored resource reclamation, too (except solid fuel: 0%)). I've got Mihara's problem craft file, too, so I'll be able to poke at his problem tomorrow.

[Psycix]

I'd like to suggest an idea to deal with the (IMO) main problem of this addon: you either need to fly over unpractically sized structures, or the structures unfold in an unrealistic manner. (though the new launchpad model covers most of this.)

The solution: A self-constructing package that needs to be filled up with materials in order to deploy

The structure (be it a launchpad, refinery, factory or whatever) is a medium sized package of medium weight. In order to build/deploy/unfold it however, it needs to be filled up with a certain amount of parts or metal. Filled up it is a lot heavier, but it effectively splits the structure up in multiple parts which can be launched separately. I'd say that deploying takes some time and a lot of energy as well.

We could construct buildings of extreme size and mass without breaking feasibility or realism.

[BlazingAngel665]

In response to what Psycix said, NovaSiliskos wet workshops provide a proof of concept for the plugin.

[fenderzilla]

Is there a way to make rocket parts or must they be sent from kerbin?

[taniwha]

you use the funny tower command pod. It converts metal to rocket parts.

[Mihara]

Sweet, I found a new bug.

Apparently, with the last changes to Kethane, it takes some extra prodding to get a KethaneExtractor to work, just adding it to a part does not. As a result, launchpad modules which did include this capability actually can't drill for ore. Editing a Kethane drill to produce ore gets around this difficulty, but well... We really need a better auger now, preferably something small suitable for bootstrapping.

[taniwha]

Actually, in my config update, I've ripped the extractor and converter configs out of the launch pads. My update will include my fixed auger. I was in the process of testing things when the stagelock bug reared its ugly head again. I've established it's electrical (despite there being plenty) and I have a sneaking suspicion it might actually be a stock bug: Majiir says he's had trouble with failing requests when they shouldn't fail.

[Tw1]

I am having a bug. The recycler is not working. I brought lots of debris parts up to the launchpad, pressed recycle debris, and nothing happened.

I have a screen shot if it helps.