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

[Fractal_UK]

Wonder if it is similiar to the bug i am getting? I made new ship today, with 4 stacks of 1.25 reactors and thermal nozzles connected with fuel lines to AM tank. And again only one reactor produced thermal power. I used TAC fuel balancer to distribute TP evenly, but now i can't pump it around manually using Alt+right click. Ship uses liquid fuel only, so i can't switch the propellant. I'm going to dock it to another ship and try again.

Unless every thermal engine is running at 100% throttle that may not be an issue. As an example, with throttle at 25% it's quite possible you will see one reactor at 100% and the others at 0% rather than seeing them all at 25%.

I think your point about balancing fuel loads may have given me an idea though, I have a hunch about this now.

Ashtoruin: Can you go into WarpPlugin/Parts/Resources find the ResourcesNuclear.cfg and edit the ThermalPower resource to say flowMode = ALL_VESSEL rather than flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH. Does this make the problem go away?

Can you also either check the KSP.log file or press Alt+F2 in game and make sure you have a "[WarpPlugin] Creating Resource Manager for Vessel..." message appearing for all the appropriate resources?

[Ashtoruin]

Unless every thermal engine is running at 100% throttle that may not be an issue. As an example, with throttle at 25% it's quite possible you will see one reactor at 100% and the others at 0% rather than seeing them all at 25%.

I think your point about balancing fuel loads may have given me an idea though, I have a hunch about this now.

Ashtoruin: Can you go into WarpPlugin/Parts/Resources find the ResourcesNuclear.cfg and edit the ThermalPower resource to say flowMode = ALL_VESSEL rather than flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH. Does this make the problem go away?

Can you also either check the KSP.log file or press Alt+F2 in game and make sure you have a "[WarpPlugin] Creating Resource Manager for Vessel..." message appearing for all the appropriate resources?

Going to be on Campus for the next 3 hours, but as soon as I get home I'll check it out.

Wonder if it is similiar to the bug i am getting? I made new ship today, with 4 stacks of 1.25 reactors and thermal nozzles connected with fuel lines to AM tank. And again only one reactor produced thermal power. I used TAC fuel balancer to distribute TP evenly, but now i can't pump it around manually using Alt+right click. Ship uses liquid fuel only, so i can't switch the propellant. I'm going to dock it to another ship and try again.

Do we need to Fuel line Antimatter? I didn't and mine worked fine, as long as stuff is connected entirely through items that allow fuel flow or whatever the wording is I thought you didn't need fuel lines for stuff. IE you only need fuel lines to go from tanks not connected end to end.

Also, having Thermal Power balance over all reactors Equally would be really nice if that could be a default thing... Or the ability to have one Large reactor and then a smaller capacitor or something you put in front of the engines, so that we would only need one Reactor instead of 6 if we have 6 engines.

[zzz]

so that we would only need one Reactor instead of 6 if we have 6 engines.

It didn't work this way for thermal things(but will be more handy). Reactor is "engine". Nozzle is just a nozzle. Capacitor have sense for electrical things but they already don't need direct connect.

Edited October 4, 2013 by zzz

[Fractal_UK]

Do we need to Fuel line Antimatter? I didn't and mine worked fine, as long as stuff is connected entirely through items that allow fuel flow or whatever the wording is I thought you didn't need fuel lines for stuff. IE you only need fuel lines to go from tanks not connected end to end.

You don't need fuel lines for antimatter if they're in the same stack, if you have fuel crossfeed capable components you should be fine.

Also, having Thermal Power balance over all reactors Equally would be really nice if that could be a default thing... Or the ability to have one Large reactor and then a smaller capacitor or something you put in front of the engines, so that we would only need one Reactor instead of 6 if we have 6 engines.

It doesn't actually matter how the thermal power is balanced between each reactor, the engines don't need the thermal power to come from their reactor, they only need the thermal power to be available on the ship. It should, however, be the case that a thermal engine won't work if the reactor it is attached to is turned off but that isn't actually the case at the moment.

I can't decouple thermal engines from their reactors though. Without reactor attachment, there is no way to determine the specific impulse of the thermal rocket. Imagine you had 3 different reactors on a ship all at 3 different temperatures, what exactly is heating what and by how much? I could work out a specific average for the active reactors but it would really reduce your flexibility in terms of having different types of rockets for different tasks. For certain temperature reactors, it could be sensible, you just have some thermal pipes around your spaceship and then a heat exchanger in your rocket nozzle but once you've got to gas and plasma core reactors, pumping stuff around your spaceship at that temperature begins to stretch credulity.

The direct attachment thing makes it obvious that it's that particular reactor that is supposed to be providing the heat and so what the thrust parameters should be, then people can just look it up in the table and see what thrust/Isp they will get.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Fractal_UK

[Ashtoruin]

You don't need fuel lines for antimatter if they're in the same stack, if you have fuel crossfeed capable components you should be fine.

It doesn't actually matter how the thermal power is balanced between each reactor, the engines don't need the thermal power to come from their reactor, they only need the thermal power to be available on the ship. It should, however, be the case that a thermal engine won't work if the reactor it is attached to is turned off but that isn't actually the case at the moment.

I can't decouple thermal engines from their reactors though. Without reactor attachment, there is no way to determine the specific impulse of the thermal rocket. Imagine you had 3 different reactors on a ship all at 3 different temperatures, what exactly is heating what and by how much? I could work out a specific average for the active reactors but it would really reduce your flexibility in terms of having different types of rockets for different tasks. For certain temperature reactors, it could be sensible, you just have some thermal pipes around your spaceship and then a heat exchanger in your rocket nozzle but once you've got to gas and plasma core reactors, pumping stuff around your spaceship at that temperature begins to stretch credulity.

The direct attachment thing makes it obvious that it's that particular reactor that is supposed to be providing the heat and so what the thrust parameters should be, then people can just look it up in the table and see what thrust/Isp they will get.

Makes sense, gah this whole mod makes me want to start making my own mod but I have no idea what to make that hasn't really been done fairly well already

[Scotius]

OK, i changed .cfg file like you instructed Fractal - and it worked beautifully All reactors produce power equally, all nozzles fire on demand. I though i've built first torchship, but then i noticed how fast four thermal engines guzzle the fuel. Still, 3.75 m. tank of liquid fuel got my 140 ton behemoth into LKO with about 1000 units of fuel left. Wow. Also, four medium radiators seem able to keep heat in check. They can't keep up with dissipating it while engines are running, but they cool off quite fast. My only worry is liftoff stage, when we can't spread the radiators, and heat is rising fast. Maybe some sort of heatsink could be helpful? It could store hefty amount of heat, but for your own good should be cooled off as soon as you are in orbit. Or things inside start to melt I have a question about radiators btw. Do they work differently in sunlight than in shadow? Logically they should radiate heat faster while being in shade.

[Ashtoruin]

OK, i changed .cfg file like you instructed Fractal - and it worked beautifully All reactors produce power equally, all nozzles fire on demand. I though i've built first torchship, but then i noticed how fast four thermal engines guzzle the fuel. Still, 3.75 m. tank of liquid fuel got my 140 ton behemoth into LKO with about 1000 units of fuel left. Wow. Also, four medium radiators seem able to keep heat in check. They can't keep up with dissipating it while engines are running, but they cool off quite fast. My only worry is liftoff stage, when we can't spread the radiators, and heat is rising fast. Maybe some sort of heatsink could be helpful? It could store hefty amount of heat, but for your own good should be cooled off as soon as you are in orbit. Or things inside start to melt I have a question about radiators btw. Do they work differently in sunlight than in shadow? Logically they should radiate heat faster while being in shade.

I concur with Scotius, worked like a charm.

And I now have learned my Docking Ports break at arround 14 m/s^2 acceleration.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Ashtoruin

[ChrisF0001]

So I see that the old Microwave Power Transmitter is now gone - Should I be changing everything over to the new transmitter? (If so, what about the receiver?...)

[Shadoworgon]

I just got an idea from Scotius' comment on heatsinks, and also from Mass effect . Could you make heatsinks that are decouplers (or just pop off on demand) for liftoff? Like when they become full of heat on liftoff just eject them and let the next heatsink start taking on heat? Idk if this is practical but been playing Mass Effect 2 lately and was first thing i thought of

[Donziboy2]

From what I got from Fractal's initial posting about it the thermal rockets should produce little heat since your dumping it out the back with the propellent. Its running generators that produce heat.

[Ashtoruin]

I just got an idea from Scotius' comment on heatsinks, and also from Mass effect . Could you make heatsinks that are decouplers (or just pop off on demand) for liftoff? Like when they become full of heat on liftoff just eject them and let the next heatsink start taking on heat? Idk if this is practical but been playing Mass Effect 2 lately and was first thing i thought of

Well as it stands right now, there really is no point to that as heat is only used to make power :3 but that would be cool in the future if heat does go that way.

[zzz]

I think more feasible is something looking like rsc thrusters rather then decouplers. In ME they pack heat to cylinders because it familiar for player form of magazine\clip.

Edited October 4, 2013 by zzz

[Donziboy2]

Hey zzz how about an Ion thruster? Uses same resources as standard Ion engine but has multiple ports that direct the thrust depending on what direction you want to go? Higher ISP and lower thrust would save weight and get ride of those ugly yellow tanks.

Or to make it really cool an Ion engine attach to gimbals that turn the thruster in the direction you want the thrust to go Maybe a little to advanced thou.

[zzz]

Hey zzz how about an Ion thruster?

I'm not invent things here, I'm make missing models Also I'm sure someone already did this, but can't remember mod.

----

Maybe someone remember this (-0-) warp drive, it supposed to be more handy for horisontal things, but how you imagine wing placement with this? I considered about to place some at ends but it can be not enough and thing will obstruct some space around anyway. It's more cosmetic problem rather then actual because you can just clip through, but I see something wrong in it. Or didn't matter?

Edited October 4, 2013 by zzz

[Sapphire]

I'm not invent things here, I'm make missing models Also I'm sure someone already did this, but can't remember mod.

That would be AmpYear.

[forsaken1111]

It would be nice to have a plasma thruster RCS block though which works like the other engines and systems in this pack.

[Fractal_UK]

It would be nice to have a plasma thruster RCS block though which works like the other engines and systems in this pack.

Actually, I was working on this for a while but I put it on the backburner to do the heat radiators. I have some half-finished code around that I will probably come back to sometime in the nearish future.

[Donziboy2]

Fractal_UK any plans for a 2.5m Core?

Maybe ZZZ can make something that looks like somebody bolted a bunch of mid tower pc's between two 2.5m steel plates, and have a small screen on one side with KSP on it.

The description would be something like.

"This may look like a bunch of cheap mid tower pc's bolted to some steel plate but these are the best gam.... high performance computers money can buy"

[forsaken1111]

Would it be possible/balanced to allow nonstupid kerbals to also give a bonus to other science lab functions like antimatter production or ISRU processes?

[Jivaii]

0.6, was it save breaking?

[Fractal_UK]

0.6, was it save breaking?

It won't break your saves by stopping your craft working in any way but there have been a lot of new models introduced, which means existing craft might end up looking a bit unusual where those parts have changed size. You will also need to snap existing designs back together properly in the VAB because of this.

[Fractal_UK]

I've made some more data to try and aid the design process.

This is a table of the thrusts you will get from a plasma engine powered by one reactor+generator in all the upgrade configurations, i.e. no upgraded parts, just the reactor upgraded, just the generator upgraded and both parts upgraded. This list is by no means exhaustive of the possible combinations you might have.

Unlike with thermal rockets, you can have as many reactor+generator pairs powering your plasma engines. So, if you don't have enough thrust, you can just keep on adding more reactors and generators until you do (in theory).

[KvickFlygarn87]

Oooh, argon! You should add a pun with the fact that argon sounds like "are gone" like "The engineers now use argon because the xenon supplies argon". Seriously though, what engines do you use for argon?

[ChrisF0001]

It won't break your saves by stopping your craft working in any way but there have been a lot of new models introduced, which means existing craft might end up looking a bit unusual where those parts have changed size. You will also need to snap existing designs back together properly in the VAB because of this.

I, er, feel I should say that it actually broke my game pretty hard, and I had to go back to 0.5. I haven't yet fully investigated why, but the symptom was that whenever I tried to switch to my Munbase or the KSS (which both had nuclear reactors, science labs and MBP parts) the game crashed straight to the desktop.

I did try removing and/or destroying every microwave transmitter I had (that being the part that had vanished... sort of), and that didn't help, so it might be something to do with the nuclear reactors. Ships with no KSPI parts anywhere nearby would load, and I did go to a test save and try launching a science lab with a Stayputnik on top, which worked...

...But in any case, if it's just me seeing this, I'm quite prepared to entertain the possibility that I've just finally reached that critical mass of mods where KSP can't quite handle it anymore. Between this, KAS v.4 and KW v.2.5 it's getting tempting to start over with a new install, and maybe being a bit more selective about just how many mods I really need...

[Kielm]

I've made some more data to try and aid the design process.

This is a table of the thrusts you will get from a plasma engine powered by one reactor+generator in all the upgrade configurations, i.e. no upgraded parts, just the reactor upgraded, just the generator upgraded and both parts upgraded. This list is by no means exhaustive of the possible combinations you might have.

Unlike with thermal rockets, you can have as many reactor+generator pairs powering your plasma engines. So, if you don't have enough thrust, you can just keep on adding more reactors and generators until you do (in theory).

Any chance of someone getting this in a plain text table for those that aren't on imgur-friendly networks?

Thankyou!