New Warp Drive!

[trekkie_]

it's been done before, but I think I can safely say none have done it better...

clocked in at a modest 1603 faces...

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as far as I see it, it's pretty much done. can't think of anything else to add. might make it radial mount.... or might make a central shaft to allow them to be stacked on other things in pairs.

I figure it will be very high vacuum ISP, very low atmosphere ISP, thrust as of yet undetermined, run on anti matter or maybe even just pure kethane. Not sure if I should add some extra standalone tanks, maybe a warp core fuel tank....or just make the part itself have a limited amount of antimatter fuel onboard. not sure about the in game size yet though.

Edited May 12, 2013 by trekkie_

[Mekan1k]

Well... I would recommend a custom fuel- Like my engine's FractSpc..... One that has rather high mass, but make the ISP super high.

Please make a blender tutorial- I am nowhere near that good....

[Tommygun]

..........

Edited May 12, 2013 by Tommygun

[trekkie_]

Well... I would recommend a custom fuel- Like my engine's FractSpc..... One that has rather high mass, but make the ISP super high.

Please make a blender tutorial- I am nowhere near that good....

I don't use blender, couldn't make a tutorial about it. I would consider antimatter a custom fuel, there's already a few mods using anti matter as fuel, which would help to keep them interchangeable. for example, maybe I make an anti matter fuel tank someone wants to use with another engine, or vice versa. pure kethane also seems like an option, since nothing but a jet engine runs on it so far. since kethane is interchangeable to other fuels, raw kethane is light and powerful, and can be mined. having to mine would help keep the drive with low fuel, just enough to get to a planet or two, with the requirement of refueling to keep it from just being too cheaty in the delta-v department it's a toss up.

[trekkie_]

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Edited May 12, 2013 by trekkie_

[trekkie_]

oooh i finally found the sweet rendering option ;P

simplified it a tad, i think it's better this way.

[MOARdV]

oooh i finally found the sweet rendering option ;P

simplified it a tad, i think it's better this way.

Ooooo. I've been cobbling twin-nacelle NTR designs, but if you get this working with radial mounting, I'll have to go and redo all of my ships. And if those are cool glowing front and back parts, even better!

[ahappydude]

Sweet-peas

[trekkie_]

some more eyecandy til I get these darn emissives and animations working properly...

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[trekkie_]

Ooooo. I've been cobbling twin-nacelle NTR designs, but if you get this working with radial mounting, I'll have to go and redo all of my ships. And if those are cool glowing front and back parts, even better!

what have you been cobbling? I'm still hoping to make it compatible with warp mods and their fuel tanks,. I am working on a custom antimatter tank too, although that's proving more complex than the engine itself in terms of design. can't make it too simple or too complex, and can't have it feel out of place either. I probably go through at least several variations of something before I come up with the design I want.

here's a sneak peek of what it looks like in-game so far.

I decided to keep the rocket noises and exhaust effects just for the sake of people having queues for whether thrust is on or off, and the throttle intensity. for now it's just running on simple liquid fuel and the glowing parts are always on.

if anyone has anything they think they can contribute or something they're working on that can be complimentary to the engine, speak up.

Edited May 13, 2013 by trekkie_

[Devo]

Very nice, Gene Roddenberry would approve

[MOARdV]

what have you been cobbling? I'm still hoping to make it compatible with warp mods and their fuel tanks,. I am working on a custom antimatter tank too, although that's proving more complex than the engine itself in terms of design. can't make it too simple or too complex, and can't have it feel out of place either. I probably go through at least several variations of something before I come up with the design I want.

My cobbling consists of using parts already in the game, regrettably: one of the small white structural pylons, flipping it around so it sweeps forward, tacking one of the engine nacelles onto it, and sticking the LV-N underneath and an aerodynamic cone on top. It looks like a crude warp nacelle. I like it as a "first generation" engine - something that could be refined into a nacelle like this one.

I'd definitely keep the rocket noises and exhaust effects, just for the cues they provide. Can you tie the rear glow effect to the throttle setting (maybe the front one, too - not sure how it'd look)?

I'm not a modeler (software engineer by trade), so my contributions to the parts would be limited, other than suggestions, or maybe plug-ins.

[BlueSubstance]

So, is this a normal engine, or is it a Star Trek Warp Drive?

Looks nice so far.

[Nobody_1707]

Ooh, if these were just a little more Matt Jefferies then they'd be perfect.

[Ryugi]

Must. Have. This. Part.

I already made my own system using CFG edits and such, using a stock ion engine, custom sounds, and things like that. But this? If I had this, I'd get all kinds of cool stuff done.

[trekkie_]

So, is this a normal engine, or is it a Star Trek Warp Drive?

Looks nice so far.

I guess you could say it's an antimatter engine, but not a warp drive in the sense that it's not going to move you at FTL speeds.

it's going to be more akin to the existing warp and FTL drives, hopefully a bit balanced.

I'm still working out exactly how I want it to function.

ideally, I'd like to have it used more for vacuum travel rather than to put things into orbit. I'm open to config suggestions. I kind of want it to not be able to get into orbit on its own except for very small minimalistic ships, i.e. itself, a fuel tank, and a command pod. but in space, I want it to be able to get some mileage. think of it like the atomic stock engine, but with more thrust to push heavier loads in a smaller timeframe.

there might be two versions made. one that is cheaty and one that isn't. I'm thinking of basing the cheaty one on the ability to do maneuvers around the sun with relative ease, possibly even being able to escape the suns SOI with a couple of tanks.

here's an example of katyj's antimatter engine configuration, my engine will be following something along these lines, or along the lines of the ftl drive created by nomad. both of those mods definitely are lacking in the model and texture design department if you've seen them.

MODULE

{

name = ModuleEngines

thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform

exhaustDamage = True

ignitionThreshold = 0.1

minThrust = 0

maxThrust = 800

heatProduction = 500

fxOffset = 0, 0, 1.5

PROPELLANT

{

name = Antimatter

ratio = 1

DrawGauge = True

}

PROPELLANT

{

name = Matter

ratio = 1

}

atmosphereCurve

{

key = 0 2200

key = 1 310

}

}

fun fact: antimatter is powerful stuff in the real world, but the entirety of antimatter created by humanity could only power a light bulb for several minutes.

Edited May 14, 2013 by trekkie_

[TelluriumCrystal]

My recommendation:

Create a new part called an Antimatter Reactor. This would take large amounts of electricity to produce antimatter, a new fuel. This fuel would then be used in "chunks" to perform jumps.

A jump would consist of you inputting the target coordinates (inclination, altitude, and GPS coordinates over target body; warp drive automatically enters a circular orbit), the warp computer deciding on a fuel requirement, and then performs the "jump". As far as coding goes, just copy and paste the craft to the new location, whilst producing extremely awesome particle effects everywhere. Once they clear, the spacecraft is at its destination!

Also, leaving the antimatter reactor on for a long period of time is not a smart plan, as it can only hold so much antimatter safely. And free-floating antimatter isn't really a safe thing to be near.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Thrfoot

[Mekan1k]

Very kerbal.

[westjet]

I would consider antimatter a custom fuel, there's already a few mods using anti matter as fuel, which would help to keep them interchangeable. for example, maybe I make an anti matter fuel tank someone wants to use with another engine, or vice versa.

Which mods are currently out there that use antimatter as a fuel?

[trekkie_]

My recommendation:

Create a new part called an Antimatter Reactor. This would take large amounts of electricity to produce antimatter, a new fuel. This fuel would then be used in "chunks" to perform jumps.

A jump would consist of you inputting the target coordinates (inclination, altitude, and GPS coordinates over target body; warp drive automatically enters a circular orbit), the warp computer deciding on a fuel requirement, and then performs the "jump". As far as coding goes, just copy and paste the craft to the new location, whilst producing extremely awesome particle effects everywhere. Once they clear, the spacecraft is at its destination!

Also, leaving the antimatter reactor on for a long period of time is not a smart plan, as it can only hold so much antimatter safely. And free-floating antimatter isn't really a safe thing to be near.

lol if only. it's actually possibly though. if you were able to use something like a script that makes hyperedit do things remotely. but people can already do that without the part, which would only trivialize its presence.

I have contemplated having the fuel tank just being a simple high output electric generator. I remember there is an atomic battery mod that decays over time to the point where it will eventually be dead. i.e. you could time warp after thrusting and find half of your fuel reserves are gone because they decayed away with time.

Edited May 14, 2013 by trekkie_

[trekkie_]

Which mods are currently out there that use antimatter as a fuel?

there's at least two that i know of.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/4426-FTL-Drive-MK-I-%28MKII-Pictures-inside%29

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-18-antimatter-rocket-pack-v0-3/

they were actually pretty fun when I used them, I mean it would be pretty breath taking to go from the launch pad to orbit in like 8 seconds in real life.

the first one doesn't actually use anti matter as a fuel source, it just uses some standalone battery as fuel, it doesn't even register an output amount and can't be used to power anything else.

Edited May 14, 2013 by trekkie_

[TelluriumCrystal]

lol if only. it's actually possibly though. if you were able to use something like a script that makes hyperedit do things remotely. but people can already do that without the part, which would only trivialize its presence.

I kind of want to stay away from electricity because an antimatter drive with solar panels would seem a bit silly, and there's only a few small mods that have any kind of high output battery. so I would have to make a battery, which would over complicate and defeat the purpose of converting electricity into antimatter.

Nobody said anything about solar panels or batteries... Just hook up a fusion reactor and you're good to go

The reactor itself would generate a small amount of antimatter each time it reaches a certain charge limit (i dunno, say 50 electricity per 1 antimatter). All you need to do is hook it up to something, be it a solar panel, fusion reactor, fission reactor, maybe even a radioisotope generator (for those who are patient). This antimatter would build up in a built-in containment vessel in the reactor. Obviously it would be possible to turn it off.

Now as far as overflow goes, the containment vessel can only hold a certain amount of antimatter (say 1000 units). Once this is exceeded, any excess antimatter will be ejected into space. This, for all intents and purposes, implodes your ship.

Yes I know this is beyond the scope of this mod, but I like speculating.

[lobsterbark]

You could have it use antimatter, and have a part that generates antimatter, like an intake, consuming electric charge and dumping excess every tick.

[trekkie_]

Nobody said anything about solar panels or batteries... Just hook up a fusion reactor and you're good to go

The reactor itself would generate a small amount of antimatter each time it reaches a certain charge limit (i dunno, say 50 electricity per 1 antimatter). All you need to do is hook it up to something, be it a solar panel, fusion reactor, fission reactor, maybe even a radioisotope generator (for those who are patient). This antimatter would build up in a built-in containment vessel in the reactor. Obviously it would be possible to turn it off.

Now as far as overflow goes, the containment vessel can only hold a certain amount of antimatter (say 1000 units). Once this is exceeded, any excess antimatter will be ejected into space. This, for all intents and purposes, implodes your ship.

Yes I know this is beyond the scope of this mod, but I like speculating.

yeah but that's still about as good as infinite fuel, just with some small hurdle to get it. don't forget, anti matter reactors produce electricity; so for electricity to be able to produce a power source that produces huge amounts of extra energy, would be a little backwards and over complicated. whether I run it on electric resources or antimatter, it'll still technically be running on electricity either way. the thing about electric generation though, is that once you're producing enough electricity per second, such an engine would run forever. take the ion engine for example, you can run the engines with enough electricity, but you'll eventually run out of xenon. that's where the balance comes in. the only way to make an engine remotely balanced is to have a finite amount of resources that can't be easily replaced.

kethane is different in that it is mined, you have to work for the extra fuel. so it's the exception. it'd be nice to be able to mine anti matter, but I'm not a plugin maker.

[TelluriumCrystal]

yeah but that's still about as good as infinite fuel, just with some small hurdle to get it. don't forget, anti matter reactors produce electricity; so for electricity to be able to produce a power source that produces huge amounts of extra energy, would be a little backwards and over complicated. whether I run it on electric resources or antimatter, it'll still technically be running on electricity either way. the thing about electric generation though, is that once you're producing enough electricity per second, such an engine would run forever. take the ion engine for example, you can run the engines with enough electricity, but you'll eventually run out of xenon. that's where the balance comes in. the only way to make an engine remotely balanced is to have a finite amount of resources that can't be easily replaced.

kethane is different in that it is mined, you have to work for the extra fuel. so it's the exception. it'd be nice to be able to mine anti matter, but I'm not a plugin maker.

Good point, though in reality antimatter is made in particle accelerators, which really only need vast amounts of electricity to operate. Also, after some careful thought, I think it would be more reasonable to call the "antimatter reactor" a "particle accelerator" for this reason. As far as balancing goes, it takes a long time to get a reasonable amount of antimatter from a particle accelerator. If it seems too easy to acquire, just increase the amount of power each antimatter unit requires to make. Plus, perhaps as a "hard mode", if you leave any amount of antimatter in the reactor for longer than a certain period of time, it begins to decrease at a steady rate.

Now as far as finite resources go, perhaps there could be gasses and such to actually collide in the particle accelerator. These could be collected using scoops or maybe mined. Or perhaps you could use any resource with it, you just choose one and toss it in.