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


Fractal_UK

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Actually the tug I made can lift itself, provided I move my ground team a safe distance away and remove about half its Liquid fuel, still leaving me with over 50K Delta at full thrust.

DT's drink less then 0.9 Liquid Fuel/s at full thrust. My tug can hold over 30K fully fueled. The Reactors use about 0.08 AM/s

Interesting, I guess that does work with antimatter. I haven't actually experimented much with the DT vistas using antimatter power, I prefer using an upgraded nuclear reactor and then ignoring that side of the fuel consumption.


In other news, I've start integrating the heat mechanics with stock parts. Still, at this stage, only for the purpose of adding the actual WasteHeat generation to these parts. No negative side effects for failing to dissipate heat just yet...

The advantage of adding custom modules to the stock solar panels is that I can add the better inverse-squareness the Microwave Power Transmitter does to all Solar Panels by default. That means identical Solar Panel performance at Kerbin, improved performance closer to the sun and decreased performance further from the sun.

Here is a satellite I built for demonstration of this. You can see the perpendicular alignment of solar panels and heat radiators really nicely here.

pTtbBEe.png

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is Antimatter collection based at all on what planet you're near?

Very much so, yes. The calculation is based mainly on planet mass and rotation period, the higher both of those are, the stronger the magnetic field and the more antimatter you will find trapped.

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Very much so, yes. The calculation is based mainly on planet mass and rotation period, the higher both of those are, the stronger the magnetic field and the more antimatter you will find trapped.

Does Kerbol count even though its a star not a planet?

And is that the same way Science Lab Science per day is calculated?

Edited by Ashtoruin
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Does Kerbol count even though its a star not a planet?

Yes but its rate is artificially reduced, though it's still actually one of the best places for collecting antimatter.

I've actually never really heard anything about stars trapping much antimatter in their magnetic fields, I am guessing that this is because though they would be rather good at it in pure magnetic field strength terms, the star kicks out a great deal of solar wind that tends to annihilate these antiparticles. If anyone has better information than idle speculation, I'd be interested to know.

And is that the same way Science Lab Science per day is calculated?

No, Science per day is defined explicitly for each planet, scaled for altitude above the surface and the stupidity of the Kerbals you have manning it.

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No, Science per day is defined explicitly for each planet, scaled for altitude above the surface and the stupidity of the Kerbals you have manning it.

So that's going to be trial and Error to find the best planet for Science, and it Seems that Jool or Kerbol Would be the best places to get antimatter.

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Question about antimatter here. Wouldn't having antimatter particles just hanging out in a planet's magnetic field be hazardous to any spacecraft within said magnetic field? Antimatter collisions release quite a lot of energy, don't they?

EDIT: So I plugged in some numbers into everybody's favourite formula, E=mc^2, and found that the total energy released from a collision with an antiproton is only about 0.2 fJ, or 0.2*10^-15 Joules. Collisions with paint flecks would probably release more energy than that. Guess I answered my own question...

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Do please add in WasteHeat consequences soon. The incentive for actually having to manage it is pretty exciting. Maybe instead of destruction of parts and such, just lower the efficiency of everything the more WasteHeat you have. Or perhaps model it on how long you've had a given level of WasteHeat.

e.g. solar panels produce only 10% power, warp drive shuts off with ANY WasteHeat, thermal rockets lose a ton of ISP or thrust or just fail to activate completely.

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0.6 has a lot of new models and art added, so chances are in 0.5 you were sitting just below KSP's 32bit RAM limit and the 0.6 update has tipped you over causing crashes to desktop. You can fix this by deleting entire mods or, if you want to keep different bits of different mods, just delete the parts you don't really need or use.

It is as you say, and as I feared. :) One complete install rebuild later, with no FAR, Orbital Construction chopped off at the knees and a couple of other part mods glossed over, plus all the de-bloaters applied, and things are much more stable now! It just took a while to set up...

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Interesting, I guess that does work with antimatter. I haven't actually experimented much with the DT vistas using antimatter power, I prefer using an upgraded nuclear reactor and then ignoring that side of the fuel consumption.

That's 420 Science per Vista.... Takes less time to collect AM then science. Atleast until the actual campaign arrives.

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Maybe have two modes on a Lab, one that acts like the Microwave Transmitter, and one acts like the Microwave Receiver. So if you put a Lab in Transmit mode, it will Transmit to any lab set to Receive mode until all Receive mode labs are filled?

Edit: Would probably want 3 modes, Transmit, Receive, Isolation

Also Some type of Thermal/Plasma RCS would be amazing... But I know you have a pretty full plate as it is :3

It would probably be better to just reuse the solar power system he already developed, and set it so that labs can only contribute science to the pool if they've got LoS to a relay in a network that has LoS to the Space Center.

There's no real point to isolating a lab. It won't generate science more quickly, and no lab would generate science quickly enough to outstrip the benefits of having access to the network for its upgrades.

Otherwise, I think it's a great idea, and if he bases it off his solar network idea, it should save him considerable time and effort in implementation.

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Also...I agree with some of the others, Fractal_UK, you should really try getting in touch with Squad. You've got a great sense of balance and have some great ideas that don't take anything away from the spirit of KSP. Excellent work. I hope their future updates don't negatively impact efforts so far, too much.

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No, Science per day is defined explicitly for each planet, scaled for altitude above the surface and the stupidity of the Kerbals you have manning it.

We're talking kerbals, so more stupidity improves science output? :)

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Generally higher altitude = better for AM production while lower altitude = better for science production.

am production has nothing to do with altitude is the planets magenet strenght thats why they have it differnt at differnt altitdues

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am production has nothing to do with altitude is the planets magenet strenght thats why they have it differnt at differnt altitdues

...yes I know, I was simplifying it because he asked a simple question. Generally you get more antimatter at higher altitudes. This is because the magnetic field gets stronger. You'll have to experiment to find the 'best' location but higher is generally better. There is going to be a sweet spot where the field strength and particle flux is the highest. I've found that putting your craft into a highly elliptical orbit is great for determining the sweetspot, just timewarp while watching your magnetometer or collectors.

It would be fantastic if the magnetometer worked with the graphing plugin so I could let it collect data and make pretty graphs.

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You need some science in the lab when you click to transmit data, you also won't see the receive option appear on the lab when you transmit the data. You need to switch to a different lab, then you should have the option.

If this is un-intuitive, I can change it so the option appears right away. The main reason I didn't bother as I didn't imagine people would want to send data and then receive it immediately back at the same place but I can see how the lack of the option might be confusing.

As someone who just installed this mod (due to seeing scott's video) a lot of it isn't very intuitive, some exploration is fine before you know what to do but it should be somewhat directed, I had no idea how the science transfer worked and many of the parts were a complete mystery to me.

And I have no idea where to go to get good science, nor why those locations are good for science, or what orbit height gives better science, as far as I can tell around moho bellow 250km you get best science, but it doesn't scale further down than that, meaning 200km+ is best for time-warping reasons except landing.

There is a fine line between leaving players free to explore, and making players annoyed at having no idea how to do something.

The guide in OP is just a description of the parts, doesn't seem to detail how you actually use the parts together to achieve something.

Would help a lot I think if there was some GUI somewhere perhaps an addition to the stock map's information stuff showing some small hints to what you can find where, and recoding your data, if you run the magnetometer at different altitudes around a planet, make that information listed there so you can send something there again to replicate previous results etc. A bit like how kethane/ISA record your findings.

Btw I got 2 smart guys in orbit of moho doing 2.8 S/D, is that normal? will take years to get even the entry level upgrades at that rate, should I send a cluster of several science labs there instead of just one?

I'm guessing parts you upgrade using science doesn't get upgraded universally? only that one part? meaning to upgrade a newly launched ship you need a computer core to download science and upgrade it's parts? though that core could obviously be decoupled before launch

Edited by K3|Chris
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It is a very complex mod and takes a long time to understand, i have about 150 hours into it.

I am actually considering making a Guide, but that would take away from my play time ;.;

I will give one piece of info...

The Plasma Thruster with Liquid Fuel requires 75MW/s of power per KN of thrust.......

Edited by Donziboy2
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