[0.20.2] Mission Controller v0.10 (06/24/2013) [ALPHA]

[UAL002]

Somebody get this man a gaming laptop stat!

[nobody44]

I'd most like to see a min vehicle mass goal. This would simulate the goal of most space launches: deliver a specific package to a specific place.

I like the mission. This mission goal (minMass + maxMass) is feasible. BTW. Do you mean dry mass? I will use the bugtracker to keep it in mind .

[White Owl]

I like the notion of a tried and tested design being less expensive than a brand new experimental model. That's a good idea.

Random equipment failures? No... KSP designs are hazardous enough already, thanks. If you want random mission destroying failures, just play around with some of the more ambitious and experimental mods out there and see how much fun you're having. (I'm looking at you, Robotic Arms.)

Not so happy about having to wait several days to switch designs or suffer a penalty. IMO, artificially slowing down the pace of an already slow game wouldn't be too much fun.

Remember the overall design of KSP has always been close enough to a simulator to be challenging and educational, but not so sim-like that only hardcore sim fans will enjoy it. Overly harsh penalties for experimenting with silly designs would be a wrong move, IMHO.

Edit: You can already specify any number of specific parts and/or resources for a mission. The mass goal would work, but isn't really necessary.

Edited June 7, 2013 by White Owl

[White Owl]

You mean something like "you have 2 years from now to finish the trip to Duna", There is one huge problem with this approach (a design problem): The controller handles only the currently selected mission. There is no mission generation process in the background, that generates a mission that pops up for the user. I will have to think about that...

Have you seen the Alarm Clock plugin? I'm no coder, but it seems to me that if it can schedule to restore a maneuver node at a specific time, then it might be modified to bring up a mission too.

[Sandworm]

I like the mission. This mission goal (minMass + maxMass) is feasible. BTW. Do you mean dry mass? I will use the bugtracker to keep it in mind .

Placing a sputnik-style probe in orbit around jool is easy. Placing a 50-ton stack of science instruments in that same place is much harder. Total vehicle mass is one way of simulating the delivery of large science packages. But the same could be simulated with resources, ie a requirement of 10-tons worth of monopropellant for long-term station-keeping. That is already implemented.

[BlazingAngel665]

Add some ISA mapsat support for missions requiring a certain amount of mapping for planets. Or maybe combine it with the sample return plugin to require certain amounts of samples to be returned somewhere. Just my two bits. PS doing a little research for the icons, thinking about what kinda shape they should take. . .

[BaphClass]

Let's see if I understand you correctly: Say we have launched a rocket with a communication satellite on it. We have presaved this rocket with its payload and we never change it for the randomized missions (e.g. the comsat contracts). Now, after a week or so we have to finish a Mun orbiter mission, and our presaved rocket won't do it. So the plugin needs to find a number that represents the similarity between those two vessels, like 50% similarity (could be done part wise, just count them and compare them, or mass wise). The lower this number is, the higher the manufacturing penalty is. Do I understand your suggestion correctly?

Not exactly, sorry. The idea behind a Manufacturing/Research penalty is to space out the frequency of mission launches so things proceed at a more realistic pace.

Let's say you start a new game and pick Comsat I. You go to the VAB and construct a vehicle capable of completing the mission, then proceed to the launchpad. You launch successfully and end up completing the mission.

After completing the mission, you idle around for a few minutes in-game time admiring your handiwork, watch it in the Orbital Map while time warping, then finally decide to go back to the Space Center screen. The total amount of time that has elapsed since your last launch is around one hour.

You click on the launchpad from the Space Center, and choose the same craft you used last time.

On load, you see the cost has ballooned to several times more than the last launch. 10 seconds into the flight, one of your engines shuts down. You re-engage it and manage to regain control. 45 seconds into the flight, one of your boosters decouples, sending you into a tumbling dive. You crash into the ocean.

What happened? The Manufacturing/Research Penalty.

The Manufacturing/Research Penalty can be broken down thusly:

1. Time Since Last Launch: It's been x amount of time since you last rolled a vehicle out from the Vehicle Assembly Building.
   
2. Vehicle Mass/Part Count: The vehicle you just launched has x amount of parts and weighs x tons. It requires x amount of time to construct to optimal quality.
   
3. Similarity to Last Launch Vehicle: The vehicle you just launched has x amount of parts in common with the last vehicle. It requires x amount of time to design to specifications.
   

In this launch, one hour has elapsed since the last vehicle rollout. The player has decided to launch another vehicle that is exactly the same as the last one. In game time, the following events would have occurred:

1. Immediately after the last launch, KSP Administration demanded another rocket be made ready in one hour. From scratch.
   
2. VAB Crew started laughing.
   
3. Engineers shrugged and said "Whatevs, it's the same one as last time. We don't have to do anything."
   
4. KSP Accountants started crying at the cost of crew overtime and rush-delivery part shipping.
   
5. VAB Crew did an admirable, but extremely rushed job. The rocket ended up being incredibly shabby due to the time constraint given. They got paid anyway and quickly left before the ensuing explosion.
   
6. Current launch began. Craft ended up crashing into the ocean due to various malfunctions.
   

Let's rewind back to when you were time warping after your first launch. Let's say you decide to continue time warping for another few days of in-game time. You return to the Space Center screen after one week of game time has elapsed. You click on the launchpad and launch the same craft as before.

This time around, the launch proceeds flawlessly and has zero Manufacturing/Research penalties. The VAB crew had enough time to construct the vehicle without cutting corners.

Another rewind. Instead of clicking on the launchpad, you go to the VAB and build a radically different craft. It winds up having the same amount of parts and mass as the last vehicle so should have taken the same amount of time to build, right? Wrong.

Although this craft has the same number of parts as the last one, they're very different. This craft actually has nothing in common with the last one aside from part count. Your Engineers had to design something completely different from the last thing they were working on, and were given an extremely small amount of time to do it. Your VAB Crew are more than capable of building this craft in the span of a week, but this time around, it's the Engineers that are working triple-time. This time around, you're again faced with cost penalties and part malfunctions, and these are much worse than before.

Unlike the VAB Crew, which can assemble and launch a medium sized vessel approximately every two weeks, Engineers require several months of research/design time to make something completely from scratch. This is meant to mimic the development timescales (and difficulties) real life space agencies experience.

For an example, I'll compare the Saturn V and N-1 rockets:

• The Saturn V rocket was based on knowledge gained from previous vehicle launches. It took only a few years to build and develop to impeccable quality, due to the similarity between previous vessels launched. Its total cost was manageable compared to its competitor...
  
• The N-1 rocket was based on untested designs and involved seriously complex engine assemblies. It presumably would have taken decades to work all the kinks out and get functional, but was launched several years before that point, ending up with many cost overruns and problems. All of them ended up exploding during launch.
  

Obviously, there's some parallels that can be drawn here.

Elaborate please. I don't understand what you mean, sorry .

Pre-Assembling vehicles basically lets you get a production queue going for your VAB. You take a craft you've saved and designate it to be built, establishing the desired timeframe. You're given a cost and quality estimate and an option to proceed. You can adjust the timeframe until cost and quality levels reach something you find acceptable, then let it start building.

The VAB constructs vehicles in the background. While you're playing, time-warping, or whatever, it's building vehicles according to the queue you've set. Once a vehicle is completed, construction of the next one begins. There should be a maximum limit on the amount of vessels you can pre-assemble, depending on their mass and part count.

When you go to the launchpad and select a vehicle for launch, it checks to see if any pre-built copies of the chosen vessel are available. If there aren't, it assumes the rocket was scratch built/designed as before. If there are, then the Manufacturing/Research penalty does not apply. Only the cost of fuel is added for the launch.

Edited June 8, 2013 by BaphClass

[Conarr]

Random equipment failures? No... KSP designs are hazardous enough already, thanks.

Amen my friend! And I seem to be a magnet for every kind of unfortunate event that can befall a spacecraft in the game anyway, so no thanks on making random crap attack me on purpose.

[localSol]

I'm putting together a series of probe-based science missions.

Would anyone be interested in seeing a pack of these? I am also working on missions integrating IonCross and/or Kethane.

I'm interested, I found myself putting parts like these on some of the probe missions nobody44 made even though they weren't required. I would be interested in Kethane missions too!

This plugin would be good for challenges too, I would love if some other statistics were available : dry/wet mass, vertical velocity, horizontal velocity, temperature (per part? - for reentry goals, nuclear meltdown, etc), Atmospheric density, G-force (by the regular KSP meter that inlcudes any direction or combination of all), acceleration (I guess mechjeb and engineer redux's methods are different than using the G meter?), statistics provided by FAR (Mach, Q, Coefficient of Drag, Lift, AoA etc) ....

Ability to send missions to others through Kerbal LiveFeed would be great! Maybe the kerbal livefeed people will want to get involved.

At some point in the future, sending back and forth mission data states might let people do co-operative missions to some extent even though the game state isn't synched, for many missions it wouldn't need to be. They would be sharing the mission window from their perspective, missiongoals could be assigned to specific player slots (#1,#2,#3..) or to any.

Maybe the excitement has gone to my head but only a little.

Edit : Something that might be helpful, could the plugin be able to detect if a certain dll is loaded, maybe even version? This would help for more specific challenge validation too.

Edited June 8, 2013 by localSol

[UAL002]

Ooo, just noticed that when you hit F2 to hide gui, your icon stays.

[localSol]

I made an easy airship mission for 0.3. Made for HL Airships mod, and you can use AmpYear to get an optional reward. :

Mission
{
	name = Friends of Buoyancy - Contract Mission 1
	description = Try out our new HL Airship envelope. Don't go too high or we'll void our warranty! Don't use engines or fuel (just the blimp) to explore for our agency! (We're too.. uh.. busy to try it ourselves) Our experts tell us there may be less air up there or maybe some squid(s). Install a barometer and maybe a few other instruments (at least one of those antenna thingies) we had lying around, ok? It would be great if we could analyze it in our labs on the other side of the planet in real-time with a more powerful transmitter too while you're up there. We need data on some funny numbers about some scientific constants we just made up. Don't send any kerbals just now because we aren't too sure about the squid hypothesis. Bring it right back down to the solid ground so we can know if the squid(s) got our stuff! We recommend some kind of reserve power with manager device (AmpYear mod) or a battery.
	repeatable = false
	reward = 0

	SubMissionGoal
	{
		PartGoal
		{
			partName = sensorBarometer
		}
		PartGoal
		{
			partName = longAntenna
		}
	}

	PartGoal
	{
		optional = true
		partName = commDish
		reward = 900
	}

	OrbitGoal
	{
		minAltitude = 12500
		maxAltitude = 13000
		maxApA = 14000
		minSeconds = TIME(60s)
		maxSpeedOverGround = 10
		throttleDown = true
		reward = 8000
	}

	LandingGoal
	{
		crewCount = 0
		body = Kerbin
		splashedValid = false
		reward = 8000
	}

	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = true
		name = ReservePower
		minAmount = 100
		reward = 1000
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = true
		name = ElectricCharge
		minAmount = 55
		reward = 1000
	}

	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = LiquidFuel
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = Oxidizer
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = MonoPropellant
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = SolidFuel
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = XenonGas
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = CompressedAir
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = Thorium
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
	ResourceGoal
	{
		optional = false
		name = IntakeAir
		maxAmount = 0.001
	}
}

It's made for the blimp part called "Airship envelope" . Smallish with flat sides, mass 0.2 t .

I think the plugin can't detect mod added parts just at the moment (caused glitches when I tried) so I'll probably be able to spruce it up later.

Edited June 8, 2013 by localSol

[vaughner]

I think it's about time to say this as a tech manager IRL. We are reaching a point where we need a proper feature request system. Nobody is being bombarded with every feature request possible from every person out there. The project is open source. Pull a branch, do some work and see if it is something nobody wants to merge into his code base. Scope creep will kill the project if every good thing he does is met with another 200 feature requests.

I've pulled the code and am working through it myself as there are things I would like to see. If you can't contribute, then enjoy what nobody made. Some of these requests are ridiculously large projects IMHO.

[nobody44]

Add some ISA mapsat support for missions requiring a certain amount of mapping for planets. Or maybe combine it with the sample return plugin to require certain amounts of samples to be returned somewhere. Just my two bits. PS doing a little research for the icons, thinking about what kinda shape they should take. . .

I will have to see if Mapsat provides an interface to interact with the plugin. If there is one, I would be very happy to make this happen.

I am in contact with the developer of the "Sample Return" plugin, and as far as I can tell he collects resources which can be used in the ResourceGoal in MC.

I'm interested, I found myself putting parts like these on some of the probe missions nobody44 made even though they weren't required. I would be interested in Kethane missions too!

This plugin would be good for challenges too, I would love if some other statistics were available : dry/wet mass, vertical velocity, horizontal velocity, temperature (per part? - for reentry goals, nuclear meltdown, etc), Atmospheric density, G-force (by the regular KSP meter that inlcudes any direction or combination of all), acceleration (I guess mechjeb and engineer redux's methods are different than using the G meter?), statistics provided by FAR (Mach, Q, Coefficient of Drag, Lift, AoA etc) ....

Ability to send missions to others through Kerbal LiveFeed would be great! Maybe the kerbal livefeed people will want to get involved.

At some point in the future, sending back and forth mission data states might let people do co-operative missions to some extent even though the game state isn't synched, for many missions it wouldn't need to be. They would be sharing the mission window from their perspective, missiongoals could be assigned to specific player slots (#1,#2,#3..) or to any.

Maybe the excitement has gone to my head but only a little.

Edit : Something that might be helpful, could the plugin be able to detect if a certain dll is loaded, maybe even version? This would help for more specific challenge validation too.

Kethane missions are already possible with ResourceGoal (Mine 500 units of Kethane and bring it back to Kerbins surface.) or PartGoal.

The additional values sound nice and I will implement them in the near future (I think they will make it into the next release).

I will not provide Kerbal Live Feed support in terms of that I will send the mission data. That would cause serious plugin dependency issues, but what I could and will do is to provide an extensive interface for access the currently selected mission (and mission packs). And if the developer from Kerbal Live Feed is willing do support my plugin, he is free to do so.

There is already an interface for external plugins to access the space program (basically the money).

I think it's about time to say this as a tech manager IRL. We are reaching a point where we need a proper feature request system. Nobody is being bombarded with every feature request possible from every person out there. The project is open source. Pull a branch, do some work and see if it is something nobody wants to merge into his code base. Scope creep will kill the project if every good thing he does is met with another 200 feature requests.

I've pulled the code and am working through it myself as there are things I would like to see. If you can't contribute, then enjoy what nobody made. Some of these requests are ridiculously large projects IMHO.

Ouh yeah, it is getting hard to keep track of all those great ideas *and* my own ideas... And ... I see, I didn't chose my nickname very wisely. "then enjoy what nobody made" sounds weird but funny .

Here is a status update:

I am currently working on a mission package browser. So basically you, as a mission designer, have to provide a single file, the mission package.

MissionPackage
{
    name = Mission package name
    description = a very long text with contributions with newest changes and stuff

    Mission
    {
    ..... default mission definition
    }
}

Many users suggested that the mission directory and the current mission selection dialog would be very inaccessible, because the directory is full of mission files.

So I decided to take that step and wrote a mission browser. Before you select a mission you select a mission package, which is a bundle of missions. A big window opens up with mission preview (you don't have to close the window again to see the mission goals and stuff), and this is it. I know that a huge mission file is inconvenient to maintain, so I guess I will write a simple bash script that converts a directory full of mission files into one mission package file.

I have some other ideas, but as I said, do not expect huge development during weekends. My notebook is not capable of running KSP... at all. It crashes for some reason.

I

[BlazingAngel665]

Contribution to the GUI side of things:

I am putting together a set of buttons at the request of nobody44 and this is the first iteration. The selection box will go away

[nobody44]

Not exactly, sorry. The idea behind a Manufacturing/Research penalty is to space out the frequency of mission launches so things proceed at a more realistic pace. ...

Ah, now I understand what you are suggesting. Generally, I like the idea, but:

• I don't know in what period of time I can implement this, so do not expect this to happen in the next release
  
• I would make this behaviour optional, default would be off. The users which are willing to use it should read your tutorial to see why the current vessel is so ridiculously expensive compared to the last vessel
  

About the queue: Do you want the user to launch the vessels in the same queue as they were built in?

Your idea makes the progress in the space program really hard (which I generally like):

Want to Duna with that huge vessel? That will take a lot of work because you have a launch window and you have to take care of the penalties.

Thanks for the suggestions, I would like to make this happen, but don't know when and how (the details) .

Contribution to the GUI side of things:

I am putting together a set of buttons at the request of nobody44 and this is the first iteration. The selection box will go away

I like it .

Edited June 8, 2013 by nobody44

[AncientAstronaut]

Holy crap this is like plugin version of career mode!

[BlazingAngel665]

Holy crap this is like plugin version of career mode!

Thats the idea

[localSol]

Kerbal Live Feed support in terms of [sending mission data would] cause serious plugin dependency issues, but what I could and will do is to provide an extensive interface for access the currently selected mission (and mission packs). And if the developer from Kerbal Live Feed is willing do support my plugin, he is free to do so.

Thanks, yes I understand just what you mean about that.

[Sandworm]

Sandworm's Mission Pack #1 (Probes)

Here are seven probe missions based loosely on realworld scenarios. All can be done with single launches and without 2-meter rockets. If you find yourself needing more than 50 or 60 parts, at launch rethink your strategy. None require modded parts although MechJeb is a good thing.

I was going to use GoogleDrive, but Google is not my friend atm. But feel free to mirror this rar elsewhere.

http://hugefiles.net/d9c2bjehym2z

[Gizmosis13]

7/06/13 ???? is this from the future lol thanks for the great mod/addon.

[White Owl]

Sandworm's Mission Pack #1 (Probes)

Here are seven probe missions based loosely on realworld scenarios. All can be done with single launches and without 2-meter rockets. If you find yourself needing more than 50 or 60 parts, at launch rethink your strategy. None require modded parts although MechJeb is a good thing.

I was going to use GoogleDrive, but Google is not my friend atm. But feel free to mirror this rar elsewhere.

http://hugefiles.net/d9c2bjehym2z

Thanks for this.

I'm gradually working on an aviation mission pack that I'll want to share with people.

So I was thinking we all need a common repository for missions and mission packs. What would be the simplest way to set that up, do you think?

[UAL002]

7/06/13 ???? is this from the future lol thanks for the great mod/addon.

Its the European date system.

[Snarfield]

I extracted the files into the right locations, but the stock missions aren't showing up in game for me.

[BlazingAngel665]

Update: Mission abort icon for the new GUI /mission browser

Next stop available and unavailable missions as well as mission type icons for landers probes and more.

[nobody44]

I extracted the files into the right locations, but the stock missions aren't showing up in game for me.

Did you rename the plugin directory? The path to the mission files has to be "KSP/GameData/MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController/" (case sensitive on Linux an Mac).