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

[DaveStrider]

That was exactly it, thank you very much.

I've noticed I get a rate of 0.083 science a day while in orbit (I parked my science vessel at 600 Km) and two crewmen inside. Is there a way to increase this?

How do I tranfer this science I'm getting to another vessel? Or are the science mods stored "globally" and can be used to upgrade other modules. I'd like to know how to work on this before letting more time go on my current research , as I 'd hate to lose what I got so far.

the base science output is scaled according to how difficult the body is to reach, the easiest being Kerbin and its moons, the hardest being Moho and Eeloo. The base science rate is then modified by the average stupidity of your kerbals, with low stupidity increasing it and high stupidity decreasing it.

Transferring science is done by clicking "Transmit" on the science lab that's producing, and then clicking "recieve" on the science lab thats recieving (you must click "recieve" within 30 minutes or the science will be lost)

science labs are covered pretty well in the wiki (link is on 1st page)

[Sindraco]

Hey! I've got a little problem here with the thermal rocket.. at first it seems to work properly but when I add more stages and parts and then come to its stage it refuses to let me thrust up as in the thrust meter won't increase and as a result it won't output any thrust.. could this be a conflict with another mod? Right now I'm using these Mods in addition:

KAS

CrewManifest

UbioWelding

HOME

Fustek Station Parts

Mechjeb

ISA Mapsat

Kethane

Any ideas ahead? else I'm just going to try with which it works properly.. Or is this intended?

[PhilMcgroin]

Just trying to get my head around all of the stuff in this pack. Confused over a few things.

1) What is the difference between MJ and MW, and what are each used for? Is one heat and one electricity? The wiki says that Solar satellites create Megajoules, but the power is sent as Megawatts? Why not just create megawatts in the first place?

2) Why can't we just power things off of electric charge, I'm slightly confused as to why a second and third power resource is needed at all when one already exists.

3) Its not mentioned in part descriptions or on the wiki thing how much of certain resources are used by things. How much MJ, or MW or whichever it is, does the science lab draw when creating science? the wiki says 500MW for creating antimatter, but doesn't mention the cost of generating science. Does that need MW or MJ?

4) Can I make solar relay stations? ie, can I place an intermediate satellite between my solar farm and the thing I need to power with a transmitter and a receiver, but no solar panels?

edit: removed the mysterious and unnecessary words I'd typed for some reason. 4am.

[Rampart]

Just trying to get my head around all of the stuff in this pack. Confused over a few things.

1) What is the difference between MJ and MW, and what are each used for? Is one heat and one electricity? The wiki says that Solar satellites create Megajoules, but the power is sent as Megawatts? Why not just create megawatts in the first place?

2) Why can't we just power things off of electric charge, I'm slightly confused as to why a second and third power resource is needed at all when one already exists.

3) Its not mentioned in part descriptions or on the wiki thing how much of certain resources are used by things. How much MJ, or MW or whichever it is, does the science lab draw when creating science? the wiki says 500MW for creating antimatter, but doesn't mention the cost of generating science. Does that need MW or MJ?

4) Can I make solar relay stations? ie, can I place an intermediate satellite between my solar farm and the thing I need to power with a transmitter and a receiver, but no solar panels?

edit: removed the mysterious and unnecessary words I'd typed for some reason. 4am.

1. MW = MJ per second, so anywhere you see something creating MW think MJ/sec

2. IIRC 1kW = 1 electric charge/sec, and some of these devices use 10's to 1000's of MW, so really it's to prevent massive electric charge numbers.

3. still working on filling out the wiki, and the science lab should be 5000MW to make AM to the full capacity, but it scales down production if you don't have enough power. researching takes 5MW.

4. I don't think so, microwave transmitters convert all solar power from the craft into MW and then beam that out, I don't think it'll touch power coming in on the receiver side, but feel free to test it and report back!

[Rampart]

In other news we may be in trouble until Fractal comes back from his holiday. Warp cores are currently sucking up all available power on crafts with them equipped, even when full of exotic matter. The trick of locking the EM tank on the warp drive doesn't work anymore either.

This means ships with plasma/quantum thrusters won't be able to have warp drives. May have to start undocking and leaving the warp core in orbit while my craft do their thing, but that's problematic when you need the thruster to slow down on arrival. Looks like warp craft are limited to Thermal engines for the time being.

Edit: hmmm...doesn't look like plasma thrusters are working right either, I've got one plugged into a 3.75 retrofit gen/AM reactor and it's only pulling 6.5 MW of power using Xenon. Unless, of course, they're only supposed to put out .9 kN of thrust.

Edited September 12, 2013 by Rampart

[PhilMcgroin]

1. MW = MJ per second, so anywhere you see something creating MW think MJ/sec

2. IIRC 1kW = 1 electric charge/sec, and some of these devices use 10's to 1000's of MW, so really it's to prevent massive electric charge numbers.

3. still working on filling out the wiki, and the science lab should be 5000MW to make AM to the full capacity, but it scales down production if you don't have enough power. researching takes 5MW.

4. I don't think so, microwave transmitters convert all solar power from the craft into MW and then beam that out, I don't think it'll touch power coming in on the receiver side, but feel free to test it and report back!

Thanks, that makes a ton more sense. I'd still like this a lot more if maybe there was only MJ or MW, rather than both. I'm getting too many resources in this game! Gonna play about with the solar power a bit. Also, does the antimatter collector need to be directly attached to the storage tank to collect AM? From looking at the resource definitions I'm thinking it works like mono, but it's good to know for sure while I'm building, rather than when I get to low solar orbit!

[Fractal_UK]

In other news we may be in trouble until Fractal comes back from his holiday. Warp cores are currently sucking up all available power on crafts with them equipped, even when full of exotic matter. The trick of locking the EM tank on the warp drive doesn't work anymore either.

This means ships with plasma/quantum thrusters won't be able to have warp drives. May have to start undocking and leaving the warp core in orbit while my craft do their thing, but that's problematic when you need the thruster to slow down on arrival. Looks like warp craft are limited to Thermal engines for the time being.

Edit: hmmm...doesn't look like plasma thrusters are working right either, I've got one plugged into a 3.75 retrofit gen/AM reactor and it's only pulling 6.5 MW of power using Xenon. Unless, of course, they're only supposed to put out .9 kN of thrust.

Don't worry, I've planned for this eventuality (sort of). I'm going to be in a skype call most of the evening tomorrow, which should give me enough time for minor bug fixes, or so I hope.

Is the plasma thruster definitely not working while the warp drive is plugged in? The thruster *should* get priority over any power supplies. They certainly should be producing a lot more than .9kN from an upgraded antimatter reactor/generator though.

I'd still like this a lot more if maybe there was only MJ or MW, rather than both. I'm getting too many resources in this game!

They aren't distinct resources. Megajoules is the name of the resources, you have a supply of megajoules. Megawatts (MW) are the rate at which Megajoules are produced or consumed (per second).

[Lazurkri]

I had a thought; instead of having the Alcubierre drive require a constant (And massive) stream of power, why not have some form of capacitor that you could trickle charge over a long period of time? That way you could have, say, a probe with a lot of solar panels in orbit of Duna that completes its assigned job and needs to reposition. Instead of using a rather slow and tedious flight using Ion Engines or having to carry massive amounts of fuel, all it would need to do is have a full capacitor ( or two or three) and it could "Jump" a certain distance to its next target, say, Laythe. you'd want to have more than one onboard of course....

This could also make for insanely nasty orbital weapons; drop a satellite with a Alcubierre drive, a armored nose cone, enough RCS to aim, a capacitor, and a pair of solar panels. Once they charged, they'd be ready to fire.... and I've read enough sci-fi to know that a Alcubierre drive ship would make a hell of a hole in whatever it hit.

[Rampart]

Don't worry, I've planned for this eventuality (sort of). I'm going to be in a skype call most of the evening tomorrow, which should give me enough time for minor bug fixes, or so I hope.

Is the plasma thruster definitely not working while the warp drive is plugged in? The thruster *should* get priority over any power supplies. They certainly should be producing a lot more than .9kN from an upgraded antimatter reactor/generator though.

They aren't distinct resources. Megajoules is the name of the resources, you have a supply of megajoules. Megawatts (MW) are the rate at which Megajoules are produced or consumed (per second).

Yup, just tested again. Even after removing the warp drive it still doesn't work properly, it's like the generator doesn't "see" the load created by the thruster so the resource system is dialing down generator output. So really two bugs I think, one for warp drive sucking up all the power, the other for plasma thruster load not registering, though I guess they could be the same.

[Donziboy2]

Yep free bugs included. This one refuses to charge exotic, my previously posted ship also has issues charging or drawing power when fully charged.

[Fractal_UK]

Yup, just tested again. Even after removing the warp drive it still doesn't work properly, it's like the generator doesn't "see" the load created by the thruster so the resource system is dialing down generator output.

You're right, it doesn't actually see the load generated by the thruster because it uses the stock resource system rather than my resource managers like the thermal engine does. This is mainly for simplicity and for making things more transparent to the players, if Megajoules appear in the propellant list, you know they're going to be needed. The fact that it can't interact properly with the resource system is supposed to be offset by the desire of the generators to always keep the ship full of Megajoules.

Can you try throttling up to max *before* clicking to activate the thermal engine and let me know if this gives you any different results? There was a bug in testing where if you throttled down, it would continually decrease the power output and prevent you throttling back up. I thought I had it fixed but it could be a recurrance.

[Donziboy2]

Nother interesting thing, same ship as pictured above but on launch pad, I drove a rover over and put AM in the ship after the Exotic filled the MJ did not fill up but the AM is still going down like its under load.

If I turn off the Generator the Thermal fills up then the AM stops getting taken and if i cycle the generator on and off I get a few hunder MJ then it stops again....

And if I turn off the Reactor and leave the generator on the thermal goes down even though the MJ dont increase.

Same thing happens with craft built with previous version.

Edited September 12, 2013 by Donziboy2

[BostLabs]

Don't mind me. Just popping in to say 'Awesome!' and sub to the thread.

[theSpeare]

My ship's warp drive also no longer charged for some reason. This was from a full-charge to begin with.

[Rampart]

You're right, it doesn't actually see the load generated by the thruster because it uses the stock resource system rather than my resource managers like the thermal engine does. This is mainly for simplicity and for making things more transparent to the players, if Megajoules appear in the propellant list, you know they're going to be needed. The fact that it can't interact properly with the resource system is supposed to be offset by the desire of the generators to always keep the ship full of Megajoules.

Can you try throttling up to max *before* clicking to activate the thermal engine and let me know if this gives you any different results? There was a bug in testing where if you throttled down, it would continually decrease the power output and prevent you throttling back up. I thought I had it fixed but it could be a recurrance.

I think I tried that previously, but for testing sake I tested as you specified, no dice. I think I have an idea though, you can see the generator adjusting output as you adjust the throttle, for a quantum thruster with upgraded gen/AM reactor that plus the computer core is pulling about 5.88 MW, which is way, way too low I think. Maybe the plasma/quantum is adjusting based on the MW generated? I recall it's max output thrust used to depend on the max output of the reactors, but I think that was the output when they were outputting max, not what their theoretical max was, so now the thruster has plenty of MJ available but is limiting itself to what it sees as the current gen output, which is like 5MW at max.

I really need to install a C# compiler and look at your source code, good practice for my coding skills

[Fractal_UK]

I think I tried that previously, but for testing sake I tested as you specified, no dice. I think I have an idea though, you can see the generator adjusting output as you adjust the throttle, for a quantum thruster with upgraded gen/AM reactor that plus the computer core is pulling about 5.88 MW, which is way, way too low I think. Maybe the plasma/quantum is adjusting based on the MW generated? I recall it's max output thrust used to depend on the max output of the reactors, but I think that was the output when they were outputting max, not what their theoretical max was, so now the thruster has plenty of MJ available but is limiting itself to what it sees as the current gen output, which is like 5MW at max.

I really need to install a C# compiler and look at your source code, good practice for my coding skills

Yep, you're exactly right as it happens. The bug is due to a particular method in my code that tries to calculate the "stable resource supply," namely the amount of power that the generator can provide without overtaxing itself. Before active management, this value was always the max output of the generator but now it can drop, at which point a whole host of other things start dropping and you end up in a downward spiral. It's a really simple fix, same for the warp charging bug, only took 2 minutes to write once I figured it out.

I'll test the code tomorrow evening and release if it works.

[Donziboy2]

Dont forget about your loyal Guinea Kerbals

[Seeker89]

I wouldn't mind being able to make power relays with the use of the microwave tech. Any way of making the transmitter pick up the power from the receiver?

[SeventhArchitect]

Is there supposed to be aminimum distance that microwaves can be recieved from?

I put a delicious looking satellite out in orbit of Kerbin (gonna send it to closely orbit the sun if the idea, "The closer you get to the sun, the more energy is caught in the solar panels", actually works. If not, I'll be dissapointed and still ahve a 200 KW sat producing microwaves), and decided to use that to get one segment of a large multi-piece structured cruiser vessel, up into the vacuum of space, adn docked to the cruiser's pilot strip, etcetera, etcetera. But it's pointed to Kerbin, almost directly at the launch site, and it doesn't pick up.

[DrPoo]

I just made an entirely new isntallation of KSp, put in Kethane and this.

The little window where you can see ore and kethane by pressign arrows dosent let me see the new materials this mod adds either. Can someone please help me?

I had not ran the game before, i just downloaded the latest version then i put in all the mods i felt like.

[SilentFall]

The little window where you can see ore and kethane by pressign arrows dosent let me see the new materials this mod adds either.

Tell me, where can you find antimatter by mining?

However, now that I think of it... geothermal power? Somewhat unrelated, but what ever.

Anyway, the materials you're looking for are in the atmosphere (collected via scoops) and in space (with aptly-named collectors).

Sometimes you'll have to use a lab to collect things from water or sometimes land on moons.

Edited September 13, 2013 by SilentFall

[Donziboy2]

Seventh there is losses associated with distance, I was getting 1% from a sat I had orbiting the sun.

DrPoo this mod does not add any resources that you can see. I think the Lab Module just checks what planet you are on before it will collect resources.

[Scotius]

You can grab and drag kethane window with left mouse button. Just relocate it somewhere else on screen and voila

[Donziboy2]

Fractal_UK can you add an off button for the Alcubierre Drive, I would like it not to start sucking my precious AM when I fuel it on Kerbin for launch.

[theSpeare]

Turn off your AM reactor instead, or the electric engine