[0.25]KSP Interstellar (Magnetic Nozzles, ISRU Revamp) Version 0.13

[iornfence]

This is really cool, now to set up a giant anti-matter farm so I can actually start testing some of this stuff.

[Orphican]

I would definitely like to include new models if the opportunity arises but I'd definitely reject any notion that this mod is just some kind of cfg edit. . .

I dont think these are simple "OP cfg edits" at all. Tone is so hard to convey online. I was joking that others might consider this mod as such and that new models would help it stand out. Although I am glad I got you explain the way you did for all to see. If your trying to model the hypothetical effect of Alcubierre drive then how about something toroidal for the model:

[Fractal_UK]

I dont think these are simple "OP cfg edits" at all. Tone is so hard to convey online. I was joking that others might consider this mod as such and that new models would help it stand out. Although I am glad I got you explain the way you did for all to see. If your trying to model the hypothetical effect of Alcubierre drive then how about something toroidal for the model

Something like that would indeed be very cool. Until I have a method of producing such things though, I'm just going to have to work extra hard on the plugin content in order to make up for the lack of original art.

Anyway, I've been working on some of the stuff I mentioned in my previous post. As I said, I've essentially added a magnetosphere to every body within the Kerbol system so I wanted to add a way of sending probes to study the magnetic fields of the various planets and moons, that way you can do some science (for interest value) as well as use probes to look at the antimatter particle flux and consequently prospect these areas for the resources used in this mod.

Here is a screenshot of some of this development work. A satellite to probe Kerbin's magnetosphere:

Stay tuned and I'll try and add this and more new content in the near future.

[lordgoogol]

Though skeptical when I first saw it, this mod looks fairly fun, challenging, and unique. I will definitely give this a download and bookmark it, and I can't wait to see what you have planned.

[Ratata]

I think this is absolutely astonishing! May i ask how much time did you invest in this project? I am really impressed by your concept, and can't wait to give it a try. Mining and resource gathering are my favorite thing to do in ksp so thank you very much for not "just" cheating the thing into working! (also my 100t ssto finally has some use and my orbital gas station has more stuff to sell!)

(+1 for the phoenix, i hope you listened to magic carpet ride!)

Edited August 2, 2013 by Ratata

[Fractal_UK]

Though skeptical when I first saw it, this mod looks fairly fun, challenging, and unique. I will definitely give this a download and bookmark it, and I can't wait to see what you have planned.

Thanks very much!

I think this is absolutely astonishing! May i ask how much time did you invest in this project? I am really impressed by your concept, and can't wait to give it a try. Mining and resource gathering are my favorite thing to do in ksp so thank you very much for not "just" cheating the thing into working! (also my 100t ssto finally has some use and my orbital gas station has more stuff to sell!)

(+1 for the phoenix, i hope you listened to magic carpet ride!)

Again, thanks very much. I'm not sure exactly how much time I've put into this project, the greatest difficulty was figuring out how to make the warp drive work in a way that is compatible with large ships. It's really easy to do with small, compact ships just by using a simple function in the KSP API but that method tended to break any large ships I tried to build. Redesigning the code to make the warp drive work without attracting the Kraken was by far the largest expenditure in time, the solution was relatively simple but it took me a long time to find it as I had to tried a variety of approaches.

Anyway, as for what I'm working on next for the mod:

• Magnetospheric probes: Measure magnetic field strength and antimatter particle flux of every celestial body in the Kerbol system. (As you can see above, this is basically done).
  
• Solar beamed power: Create satellites with solar panels and beam the energy to other ships (especially effective if you can put satellites into a low Kerbol orbit).
  
• Atmospheric scoop: Put a rocket on an elliptical orbit with a periapsis inside the atmosphere and harvest resources as you travel. Primary goal at present being to harvest Hydrogen (liquid fuel) from Jool's atmosphere.
  

[Ratata]

the collector on my ship goes up to 7.9....x-007 but it doesn't fill up the directly attached antimatter tank, what am i doing wrong?

[Fractal_UK]

the collector on my ship goes up to 7.9....x-007 but it doesn't fill up the directly attached antimatter tank, what am i doing wrong?

At a particle flux of 7.9x10^-7 it would take just over 2 weeks to collect a sole resource of antimatter. The best place in the Kerbol system has a particle flux of about 6x10^-3 which should let you generate about 500/day. You can hunt around for this location if you wish or you can feel free to PM me if you want to know the optimal place to go.

You can also use multiple collectors per tank if you want to speed this up further.

[Ratata]

ah, i see, scale problem. thanks!

[Fractal_UK]

A couple more development screenshots here demonstrating the space solar power system.

A satellite in Kerbin orbit equipped with a Microwave Beamed Power Transmitter

sends power down to a rover which has no batteries, RTGs or solar panels of its own, only a Microwave Beamed Power Receiver. Multiple satellites can and will send power to a single ship if you have them available.

Next on the to do list is to sort out line of sight between transmitter and receiver.

[Scotius]

So, if we set up a envelope of power sats around a planet, we can power all our crafts on the surface? Awesome! My kethane rigs are going to shed a lot of weight (not to mention part count) This mod is getting better and better.

An idea: If you are going for line-of-sight, can you add some sort of power transmitter? This way power sats on day side could've send power to their brothers on night side, and let them redistribute it to other crafts?

Edited August 3, 2013 by Scotius

[Matticus88]

I'm going to not use any of the warp stuff, but the microwave beamed power looks great, perhaps consider that as a seperate mod?

[YX33A]

...Awesome. Bit ugly, but AWESOME.

I'm off to try and locate some Antimatter. I have a hunch on where the best spot to harvest Antimatter would be, but I doubt I could effectively gather it from there if I was correct.

Also you say that Antimatter goes down quickly. Do you mean when you are using the reactors or just in general(hopefully only when using the reactors)? I was thinking of adding some antimatter storage to my planned Space Station.

[Ryugi]

I made my own set of MARA engines and such to simulate a Warp Drive (more specifically Impulse Engines since they can't warp). They use a tiny bit of a special fuel and send it into a reactor that generates another resource that runs the engines and generates electrical power for the vessel. I can get all over the Kerbol system using them, and they have a nifty custom sound effect thanks to Firespitter's module.

However, the closest thing I had to a true "Warp Drive" was the Hyperjump Mod which doesn't really work anymore, and never really worked so well to begin with. But this? I never really wanted a loading screen to pop up between things, and I didn't want to use HyperEdit to simulate a warp or hyperjump or what have you. I wanted a Warp Drive that I could use to point, click, activate, and then travel very quickly in a straight line to somewhere close to my destination, then use my own mod or whatnot as Impulse Engines to align my orbit and things like that.

Your mod is the closest thing I've seen to what I always wanted in a Warp Drive mod. I do, however, have a question. Is the Warp Drive/plugin set up so, if one were so inclined, they could change the resource that the drive drains when active without breaking the mod/plugin combo? For example, I don't know if your plugin requires it to use your resource in order to function. If all the plugin does is say "the ship goes fast now in this direction" and the part config for the drive says "I drain THIS fuel at THIS rate", that means I could edit the drive to use my "M/AM-Capacity" fuel that I've already created for use with my own engines without having to worry about breaking the connection between the config files and the plugin.

If that is indeed the case, that also means I would be able to finally, finally, have the closest thing to a true "Star Trekky" experience in KSP (without actually downloading the Trek model mods) and really start enjoying my little sandbox in ways I've only dreamed about doing before. Any clarification you could give on this would be awesome.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: On the note of "OP CFG Edits" my personal mods are probably something like that, but I didn't start out with the intention to make an engine to "win KSP". If I wanted to do that, I could have just turned on infinite fuel, but that's no fun. My idea was to have the capacity fuel be drained slowly with use of the engines, and over time, the tanks would run out and need to be refilled somehow. Though, that would be after several missions to observe the system. Honestly I kinda wanted to put a refueling station in orbit to refuel drained vessels to keep the fleet moving, though collector parts would lessen the burden on refueling. But with the possibility of your mod being added to the combination, I could have a part that drains a proportionally greater deal of capacity fuel and make refuelling trips and collector parts more necessary than if I simply stuck to my Impulse Engines. That presents a choice between using Impulse, which is slower but far more sustainable, or using Warp which is faster, but less sustainable. That choice, I think, helps with balance concerns. Anyway...

I went through a lot of trial and error to get the numbers right, learn my way around the CFG language, and what modules did what etc. I can't list the number of times I tore a ship apart from going to full throttle, or overheating, or not having lines of code correct in the CFG and pulling hair out over "fuel deprived" messages and drain rates. I even had a fun problem where I'd get to a destination and my fuel would be completely drained because the reactor coding was wrong. So, yes, my personal edits do not follow the mold of the standard game, and they make the game easier because I don't need multiple stages or big part counts to enjoy much of the game (my system is also very low-end). However, I don't tote my edits as being amazing, and everyone plays the game in their own way. Regardless, sorry for the rant.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Ryugi

[Fractal_UK]

So, if we set up a envelope of power sats around a planet, we can power all our crafts on the surface? Awesome! My kethane rigs are going to shed a lot of weight (not to mention part count) This mod is getting better and better.

An idea: If you are going for line-of-sight, can you add some sort of power transmitter? This way power sats on day side could've send power to their brothers on night side, and let them redistribute it to other crafts?

That's right, you can set up a satellite constellation, much like you would if you were trying to create a GPS network or something and then beam the power down to the ground. Relay satellites are something that I've considered but haven't come up with a good way of implementing yet, so that one may be for a later update unless I am inpsired to a solution in the near future.

I'm going to not use any of the warp stuff, but the microwave beamed power looks great, perhaps consider that as a seperate mod?

I thought about it, I totally understand that people might want some of the parts in the pack and not others but interoperability would become a problem with two mods. There is no harm in just ignoring or even deleting the parts you don't like though. I could also look at producing a cut-down version of the mod with certain parts taken out.

...Awesome. Bit ugly, but AWESOME.

I'm off to try and locate some Antimatter. I have a hunch on where the best spot to harvest Antimatter would be, but I doubt I could effectively gather it from there if I was correct.

Also you say that Antimatter goes down quickly. Do you mean when you are using the reactors or just in general(hopefully only when using the reactors)? I was thinking of adding some antimatter storage to my planned Space Station.

The reactors are quite high power output so when they are turned on, antimatter goes down very quickly. When they are turned off, you are fine, you won't lose any.

Your mod is the closest thing I've seen to what I always wanted in a Warp Drive mod. I do, however, have a question. Is the Warp Drive/plugin set up so, if one were so inclined, they could change the resource that the drive drains when active without breaking the mod/plugin combo? For example, I don't know if your plugin requires it to use your resource in order to function.

The warp drive requires "megajoules" my large scale electrical power resource, unfortunately that is hard coded and fairly integrated into the mod. If you want to power it with your own resources, the easiest thing to do would be to make a reactor that takes in some of your special resource and produces megajoules. That method should be very simple to set up. There is a possibility that different resource options for the warp drive itself will emerge in future versions but I'm afraid I have no direct plans for this at the moment.

[Cryocasm]

I could so some modelling..

[Scotius]

As far as i'm aware, Alcubierre type warp drive requires power and negative matter. Maybe we could mine for it somewhere? Or maybe converse kethane into it?

[Ratata]

As far as i'm aware, Alcubierre type warp drive requires power and negative matter. Maybe we could mine for it somewhere? Or maybe converse kethane into it?

thats what i thought, i had the idea of maybe "refining" kethane with a rate of something like 100/1 and then use the refined kethane and an absurd amount of energy to create 10/1 antimatter? i really love mun and minmus stations and would love to set up an antimatter factory! it would be a 1000 to 1 plus a lot of energy tradeoff which seems not too game-breaking.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Ratata

[Fractal_UK]

I'm looking into methods of making a viable antimatter factory that you could make use of. The space solar system has the potential of producing absolutely vast quantities of energy if you can put the power satellites into a sufficiently low orbit of Kerbol, especially now that I've fixed the inverse square dependence. A constellation of such satellites would be a truly unrivalled way of generating power.

I could definitely envisage creating an antimatter factory that took in huge amounts of energy and produced antimatter in very tiny quantities. I'm not sure I'd want to add in a Kethane dependence though because I can't assume that everyone will play with it, even if it is, in my opinion, one of the best mods out there.

Anyway, update on the solar power code:

• I've changed the solar satellites power curve to better approximate an inverse square dependence on altitude from the sun (at present though, this change will only take effect if your ship has both solar panels and a microwave power transmitter). Kerbin power output is the same but power output drops faster in the outer system and rises faster in the inner system.
  
• I've added line of sight code: Receiver needs line of sight to satellite and satellite needs line of sight to sun.
  

Here is a satellite in Kerbin orbit:

The same satellite in a very low Kerbol orbit:

Because this satellite orbits Kerbol, in the day time we have massive amounts of power available:

But at night the planet blocks the line of sight to the satellite and we have nothing:

Satellites orbiting their local body can sometimes beam power around the terminator, here is an example. The rover is in darkness but the power satellite is hovering over the terminator in line of sight of both the rover and the sun. Thus, the rover has power.

At some point I will also add in losses for beaming power through the atmosphere.

[Ratata]

again nice work! i see your point about the kethane dependence but might it be possible so use kethane as a booster? you know, it works without, but if you have kethane it speeds up the process or something like that? still really excited about this mod!

[Scotius]

Nifty! What's the range of microwave beams? It would be slightly ridiculous to get power from sats in low Kerbol orbit around Jool. Another thing: is it possible to beam down power from other sources? I have this idea of two orbital stations carrying both solar panels for daytime, and RTGs for nighttime. They'd power my kethane installations without forcing me to land huge, heavy and unwieldy crafts near my miners - it causes severe lag when two high part count ships are near each other.

[Khoal]

Very nice mod! I set this, in a nice spot I think, up. Needs to be expanded, though.

Here are some bugs I noticed (I know that this is an early release):

1) The Thermic Rocket Nozzle works without a working reactor (no antimatter on the craft) - simply use action keys to release the Launch Clamps, fire the engine manually and you are good to go.. almost. The craft then has a huge tendency to go sideways if given any input, straight up works fine. (If you hit the staging button everything goes back to normal)

2) The Braytons produce energy without a working reactor (no thermic energy, of course, stored).

3) If you use more than one Antimatter-Tank and another one is empty, the reactor shuts down. (Had the middle one (full) and the biggest one (nearly empty, 1,3 units stored)). Took me a while to figure this out - set up from above; one of the sections was already there)

4) When the throttle gets locked, because of a deactivated reactor, it doesn't unlock when you reactivate the reactor. (You have to go back out and in again.)

I think that were all of them.

Keep up your good work, I'm eagerly awaiting your next update.

Greetings,

Khoal

(Sorry for my, eventually, bad grammar - I'm tired and english isn't my native tongue)

List of installed Mods:
HL-Airships
Procedural Fairings
Kerbal Alarmclock
Kethane
Zeus Telescope
Mechjeb 2
Mission Controller
Romfarer - Dockingcam (Standalone)
Subassemblymanager
Tac Fuel Balancer
Warpplugin

[Orphican]

EDIT: On the note of "OP CFG Edits" my personal mods are probably something like that, but I didn't start out with the intention to make an engine to "win KSP". . .

Not at all. There was a mod floating around here somewhere called "Impossible Innovations" that was the very definition of "Op cfg edits".

This mod and from the sound of it your mod Ryugi seem to me to be the best attempts at something I really want to see in the final game.

[Fractal_UK]

Nifty! What's the range of microwave beams? It would be slightly ridiculous to get power from sats in low Kerbol orbit around Jool. Another thing: is it possible to beam down power from other sources? I have this idea of two orbital stations carrying both solar panels for daytime, and RTGs for nighttime. They'd power my kethane installations without forcing me to land huge, heavy and unwieldy crafts near my miners - it causes severe lag when two high part count ships are near each other.

I'll answer this question now that these features are implemented So, at the moment I'm focused on getting the system working only with solar power but I'll probably add other power sources eventually. Until then, putting a few of these satellites into high polar orbits is likely to give you excellent ground coverage, even at night.

Microwave beams don't have a max range, they simply attenuate with distance, I've been pretty generous with these distances but beamed power received at Jool's orbit is around 500x less than is being generated in low Kerbol orbit. I have also added some losses as part of the beaming process (in vacuum, the efficiency is 85%) and additional losses occur due to being in atmosphere.

Examples:

The old solar buggy on Kerbin

And a Kerbal X I put into orbit

The Kerbal X receives significantly more power because it's above the atmosphere.

My efficiencies in these screenshots are so horrendously low because most of my power is coming from the satellite in low Kerbol orbit and only a small amount of that power is actually hitting my dish. I can easily hit the 85% efficiency limit by using a very nearby satellite in LKO but I still receive less power than a really inefficient transfer from a Low Kerbol Orbit satellite:

So, there are some big gains to be had by putting satellites in low Kerbol orbit but you'll have to pay for it in delta-v, it isn't cheap to get there and obviously you'll never be able to receive this power on the surface of a celestial body at night. Planetary or lunar orbiting satellites will have lower output but you may well be able to beam power across the terminator.

This update is getting fairly close.

[Orphican]

. . . An idea: If you are going for line-of-sight, can you add some sort of power transmitter? This way power sats on day side could've send power to their brothers on night side, and let them redistribute it to other crafts?

From that last post I take it that concept is probably not going to happen then? Either way your really not joking about making kerbals work for their ftl.

Edit: Im an idiot. Yes that concept will happen. We can put "power satellites" in high local orbit and receive power through the night if I understand correctly.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Orphican
not thinking