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

[Eadrom]

Just a quick note, from your screenshot, your lab is severely underpowered. You need 5 MW to get the full daily science rate possible. If you are supplying less power than that, you will get a proportionally lower percentage of science per day. A bigger nuke generator or microwave power transmission might easily solve that issue for you.

[Umlüx]

microwave receiver have to be pointed at the transmitter, right? so, if i want to power a science lab with this, i'd have to build a vast network of solar power stations and relays around kerbin orbit..

[forsaken1111]

There's no longer a Science resource or a menu button for explicit transfers. Whenever you visit a craft with an active science lab, KSPI will calculate the amount of science the lab has generated since you were last there. it then adds that directly to your total, which you can view back at the R&D Center.

Fractal_UK has already mentioned that the next version will add a message when this happens, so that it's more obvious.

I've been wondering though if there is any way to annotate a craft with information that you can retrieve even while the craft isn't loaded. If that's possible, then the plugin could just store the science/day rate on the craft and then bump the science total periodically whenever the simulation is running. Another alternative is just to persist the science rate keyed off of the craft id. I think the only way that could get out of sync is if the player removes a craft from the tracking center.

The difficulty there lies in the power source I'd think. You can store the science/day rate sure but how do you know when the power source craps out? Eventually even nukes will run out of fuel without reprocessing.

[Eadrom]

microwave receiver have to be pointed at the transmitter, right? so, if i want to power a science lab with this, i'd have to build a vast network of solar power stations and relays around kerbin orbit..

The source's transmitter direction doesn't matter, but yes, the more straight on you have the receiver pointed to the transmitting source, the higher % of power you can capture.

Also, keep in mind that you need neither a vast network of relays or solar power stations. A single satellite with a 2.5m or 3.75m nuke reactor, generator, and microwave transmitter in a geosynchronous orbit over your space center will pretty much give you *a lot* of power around your space center. Also, anything that produces electrical current or megajoules will work on a transmitting satellite. The transmitter will convert EC to megajoules when it transmits it to another ship. That is why large solar power stations in low Kerbol orbit that produce insane amounts of EC make excellent microwave transmitters.

Any time I want to make use of microwave power, I will toss up 3-5 nuke power sats to provide a transmitter network. I have yet to bother with solar power because using the nuke reactors is such an easier and part-light option for me.

[Goonswarm]

The source's transmitter direction doesn't matter, but yes, the more straight on you have the receiver pointed to the transmitting source, the higher % of power you can capture.

Also, keep in mind that you need neither a vast network of relays or solar power stations. A single satellite with a 2.5m or 3.75m nuke reactor, generator, and microwave transmitter in a geosynchronous orbit over your space center will pretty much give you *a lot* of power around your space center. Also, anything that produces electrical current or megajoules will work on a transmitting satellite. The transmitter will convert EC to megajoules when it transmits it to another ship. That is why large solar power stations in low Kerbol orbit that produce insane amounts of EC make excellent microwave transmitters.

Any time I want to make use of microwave power, I will toss up 3-5 nuke power sats to provide a transmitter network. I have yet to bother with solar power because using the nuke reactors is such an easier and part-light option for me.

I am not at the point of unlocking it yet, but would it be possible to place these transmitters in orbit and use them to allow for an Ion Engine craft to travel to space? Right now I can only run them for a few seconds with the basic generators.

[Umlüx]

The source's transmitter direction doesn't matter, but yes, the more straight on you have the receiver pointed to the transmitting source, the higher % of power you can capture.

Also, keep in mind that you need neither a vast network of relays or solar power stations. A single satellite with a 2.5m or 3.75m nuke reactor, generator, and microwave transmitter in a geosynchronous orbit over your space center will pretty much give you *a lot* of power around your space center. Also, anything that produces electrical current or megajoules will work on a transmitting satellite. The transmitter will convert EC to megajoules when it transmits it to another ship. That is why large solar power stations in low Kerbol orbit that produce insane amounts of EC make excellent microwave transmitters.

Any time I want to make use of microwave power, I will toss up 3-5 nuke power sats to provide a transmitter network. I have yet to bother with solar power because using the nuke reactors is such an easier and part-light option for me.

well.. why shoot reactors up there? it would be better and easyer (for deployment and refueling) to put them directly somewhere at KSP and connect everything with KAS (if you want to power some labs)

the point is, it would be awesome to have a maintainance free power source like solar power. and for this you need some relay stations. or get kerbin to stop rotating

edit:

maybe something like this?

every solar sat is equipped with a receiver and transmitter so they can transmit energy from one to another. from the ones in sunlight to the others on the nightside. and on the ground you have simply to point upwards and get power from the network.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Umlüx

[MilkyPandolu]

Hey, sorry if this has been solved before (I've done some searching and haven't found anything) but I've been unable to get this mod working with my game at all, I've reinstalled the game, removed all other mods and did a bit of troubleshooting but I can't get it to work, it crashes my game at the first loading screen. it goes until \WarpPlugin\Spaces\sci\internal\crewtestinternals then either freezes, crashes or comes up with a runtime error. Any help would be appreciated thanks

[Eadrom]

I am not at the point of unlocking it yet, but would it be possible to place these transmitters in orbit and use them to allow for an Ion Engine craft to travel to space? Right now I can only run them for a few seconds with the basic generators.

It depends. If you are referring to regular ol' stock ion engines, a receiver+radiators could mass in lighter than a bunch of solar panels. If you are referring to the plasma thrusters, it could work, but it would depend on how much power you have being pumped out and how far away your ship is from the transmitter. I have toyed with the idea of using several big nuke powersats with transmitters to power extremely fuel efficient tugs in Kerbin SOI by using beamed power and plasma thrusters.

well.. why shoot reactors up there? it would be better and easyer (for deployment and refueling) to put them directly somewhere at KSP and connect everything with KAS (if you want to power some labs)

the point is, it would be awesome to have a maintainance free power source like solar power. and for this you need some relay stations. or get kerbin to stop rotating

edit:

maybe something like this?

(pic snip)

every solar sat is equipped with a receiver and transmitter so they can transmit energy from one to another. from the ones in sunlight to the others on the nightside. and on the ground you have simply to point upwards and get power from the network.

Yes, KAS can be used to park nuke power trucks next to labs and swap them out as needed. Not everyone uses KAS though.

In regards to the diagram, the only issue you might have is that solar panels around Kerbin simply don't create enough electricity to be competitive with satellites beaming power generated by nuclear power. You WOULD indeed get power with the set up depicted in the diagram, you just wouldn't get a whole lot without using insane numbers of solar panels. Look through the last dozen or so pages where people have been discussing a MJ->EC/EC->MJ converter part. The size/number of solar panels you need gets ridiculous rapidly when you start comparing solar power generated in Kerbin orbit and the power output of even the un-upgraded nuke reactors. Also, I think a lot of people exaggerate the nuke reactor's issue of needing to be refueled. They last for years at low power and the smaller ones last for years even at full power. You can throw a small docking port anywhere on the nukesat and periodically dock a maintenance ship with a science lab on board and reprocess the fuel. Or you make the reactor/generator pair able to separate and just dock a new pair when the current one runs out of fuel. Or you can just throw a brand new sat up into orbit. Or in the upcoming 0.8, you can dock a crewed vessel with the nuke sat and just EVA and quickly take out the old fuel and put new fuel in.

I personally find it much easier to just lob a half dozen nuclear power sats every couple game years. I will occasionally do a maintenance flight because I enjoy the realistic aspect of having to do maintenance on a satellite. Whenever I do use microwave power, by the time my constellation of nukesats needs to be replaced/refueled, I've moved on technologically. It's a very niche technology for me and I admit I don't often take advantage of it as often as I could.

Here is the picture of my 33 Kerbal, 16 science lab, super science point generating space station. Been on station for almost 2 years and I've only had to reprocess reactor fuel once. There is a docking port on top so I can bring in supplies or whatnot as needed (LOF and in 0.8, uranium fuel). The amount of science this thing generates is insane. I sent it out to Moho with just basic radiators and reactors and generators. Upgraded those parts as I unlocked (rapidly) the tech. All 16 labs are operating at full power and both reactors are still only burning at 30% each. I had to attach an additional module with some extra radiators until I was able to upgrade the ones that came on it, but other than that issue, it has worked brilliantly for me.

[Eadrom]

Hey, sorry if this has been solved before (I've done some searching and haven't found anything) but I've been unable to get this mod working with my game at all, I've reinstalled the game, removed all other mods and did a bit of troubleshooting but I can't get it to work, it crashes my game at the first loading screen. it goes until \WarpPlugin\Spaces\sci\internal\crewtestinternals then either freezes, crashes or comes up with a runtime error. Any help would be appreciated thanks

What is your complete path for the plugin data?

You should have three additional folders under /KSP/GameData in addition to the Squad folder.

Once you have installed KSPI correctly, you should see 4 folders in GameData. Something like this:

../KSP/GameData/Squad/..

../KSP/GameData/WarpPlugin/..

../KSP/GameData/TreeLoader/..

../KSP/GameData/HexCans/..

You could also try re-downloading the .zip.

[Fractal_UK]

I am not at the point of unlocking it yet, but would it be possible to place these transmitters in orbit and use them to allow for an Ion Engine craft to travel to space? Right now I can only run them for a few seconds with the basic generators.

It's difficult to get enough power to launch with satellites, though it is possible. Some people have built constellations of low Kerbol orbit satellites with enough power to do this type of thing, it's not really practical with Kerbin solar satellites though, you'd simply need too many. A constellation of nuclear powered satellites around Kerbin will be very powerful, however.

In the next update we also have microwave thermal receivers coming, which will let you receive microwave power as thermal power to run the thermal rocket. Those engines have much lower specific impulse than their electric counterparts and consequently far higher thrust. With the proper infrastructure, these are very capable of facilitating more efficient launches.

Hey, sorry if this has been solved before (I've done some searching and haven't found anything) but I've been unable to get this mod working with my game at all, I've reinstalled the game, removed all other mods and did a bit of troubleshooting but I can't get it to work, it crashes my game at the first loading screen. it goes until \WarpPlugin\Spaces\sci\internal\crewtestinternals then either freezes, crashes or comes up with a runtime error. Any help would be appreciated thanks

I'd definitely suggest deleting everything in the WarpPlugin folder, then redownload the mod and re-install it, occassionally files can become corrupted for whatever reason. Your install location looks to be correct.

[forsaken1111]

well.. why shoot reactors up there? it would be better and easyer (for deployment and refueling) to put them directly somewhere at KSP and connect everything with KAS (if you want to power some labs)

the point is, it would be awesome to have a maintainance free power source like solar power. and for this you need some relay stations. or get kerbin to stop rotating

edit:

maybe something like this?

-snip-

every solar sat is equipped with a receiver and transmitter so they can transmit energy from one to another. from the ones in sunlight to the others on the nightside. and on the ground you have simply to point upwards and get power from the network.

Does relaying power like that actually work? Its a good theory but as I understand it the power transmission is just point-to-point and not networked.

[Eadrom]

Does relaying power like that actually work? Its a good theory but as I understand it the power transmission is just point-to-point and not networked.

I haven't personally tested this, but as far as I know, there is a relay value on either the receiver, transmitter (I can't remember), so I am like...90% sure that you can relay power as long as the transmitter sats have both receivers and transmitters on them. There was talk a while back on how to best set up a low Kerbol power network and I believe that using relays was key to getting the most out of that set up.

[MilkyPandolu]

What is your complete path for the plugin data?

You should have three additional folders under /KSP/GameData in addition to the Squad folder.

Once you have installed KSPI correctly, you should see 4 folders in GameData. Something like this:

../KSP/GameData/Squad/..

../KSP/GameData/WarpPlugin/..

../KSP/GameData/TreeLoader/..

../KSP/GameData/HexCans/..

You could also try re-downloading the .zip.

That is all done and correct, I've re-downloaded it from several different sources with all the same result. The complete path for the plugin data is /steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal space program/gamedata/.. with all four folders in the directory.

[Hremsfeld]

I haven't personally tested this, but as far as I know, there is a relay value on either the receiver, transmitter (I can't remember), so I am like...90% sure that you can relay power as long as the transmitter sats have both receivers and transmitters on them. There was talk a while back on how to best set up a low Kerbol power network and I believe that using relays was key to getting the most out of that set up.

Unfortunately, it's that 10% of the time. The power transmission is strictly point-to-point, regardless of how many relays you could have.

[forsaken1111]

Unfortunately, it's that 10% of the time. The power transmission is strictly point-to-point, regardless of how many relays you could have.

Thank you for clarifying. I had thought that the earlier talk of energy networks was theoretical. It would be nice but I believe you're right in that the current transmission is p2p and will not relay.

I'll be testing this to be sure once I unlock them in my career mode play.

[Fractal_UK]

Thank you for clarifying. I had thought that the earlier talk of energy networks was theoretical. It would be nice but I believe you're right in that the current transmission is p2p and will not relay.

I'll be testing this to be sure once I unlock them in my career mode play.

It is actually possible to relay power but the conditions under which it can happen emerge rarely in practice. In light of this discussion, however, I've decided to push forward the long-awaited rewrite of the microwave power system.

The upshot of these changes is that relays will become a seperate option for any vessel with both a transmitter and a receiver. They perform no game function other than to allow line of sight tracing via a single relay. So, you can transmit power vessel->vessel or vessel -> relay -> vessel but not vessel -> relay -> relay -> vessel (or more). Proper networks with large numbers of relays should become possible as a result.

The new system uses far less file IO too, which is something I was worried about in the old one.

[XanderTek]

Will the microwave receivers still need to be aimed accurately at the relay/transmitter? I find this makes them pretty difficult to use, and in a real life situation i suspect it would auto-track. Getting auto-tracking working in game would probably be difficult, but the option of an omni-directional receiver (even a less efficient one) would open up a lot more fun possibilities.

[Scotius]

Will the microwave receivers still need to be aimed accurately at the relay/transmitter? I find this makes them pretty difficult to use, and in a real life situation i suspect it would auto-track. Getting auto-tracking working in game would probably be difficult, but the option of an omni-directional receiver (even a less efficient one) would open up a lot more fun possibilities.

Seconded. I haven't bothered to rebuild my solar powersat ring in 0.22 because of this. It was annoying to "see" 4 power sats sitting in keostationary orbit from a ship in LKO, and still get only laughable amount of power from one satellite. Three other shifted out of alignment, and happily beamed megawatts of power into interplanetary void

[Hremsfeld]

Seconded. I haven't bothered to rebuild my solar powersat ring in 0.22 because of this. It was annoying to "see" 4 power sats sitting in keostationary orbit from a ship in LKO, and still get only laughable amount of power from one satellite. Three other shifted out of alignment, and happily beamed megawatts of power into interplanetary void

I mean, the sun's kinda good at blocking transmissions...

Looking forward to the changes too, though. Four sats 90 degrees apart in GEO plus however many you want down by the sun equals a really nice way to use plasma thrusters.

[Donziboy2]

Seconded. I haven't bothered to rebuild my solar powersat ring in 0.22 because of this. It was annoying to "see" 4 power sats sitting in keostationary orbit from a ship in LKO, and still get only laughable amount of power from one satellite. Three other shifted out of alignment, and happily beamed megawatts of power into interplanetary void

Unless something has changed it does not matter where you point the transmitter on the sat, as long as it has LOS on the receiver, if it its blocked then you wont get anything. At one point I was running a DT Vista on a dozen Large Receivers . The transmitter sats where massive to say the least... I also found that using the Infernal Robotics parts allowed me to move my dishes around to get more power.

You cant see it but the receivers could rotate and pivot a pretty good distance. I abandoned this due to the fact that you cant pull a load if your using a central engine:rolleyes: And using 2 DT's would require a crapton of transmitted energy.

This solar sat used KOSMOS panels and Infernal Robotics parts to unfold and extend.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Donziboy2

[Fractal_UK]

The big advantage of this new system is that you'll be able to concentrate all your solar energy satellites into a low Kerbol network and deploy only relays in orbit of local bodies, to let you receive power at night and such.

A microwave receiver that points directly at the transmitter is very possible, it just needs a suitable model with an appropriate pivot and the code is fairly straightforward. The existing receivers don't have such a capability, so can only point in a fixed direction. The thermal receivers coming in 0.8 are also perhaps a little more forgiving in that they can receive power side on - but from any side.

[KhaosCorp]

Looking forward to 0.8...making power relays is one of the things that drew into this mod (though I like many other aspects now). Not only useful for the plasma engines, but I was planing on using it for HUGE scale industrial operations...kethane and EPLP operations (as well as harvesting for this mod in 0.8).

Of course as is the power grid dont work quite like I had hoped, but sound like 0.8 will fix that =)

edit: I should mention I have changed the large size drill and converter to run on MJ rather than electric charge...makes more sense heavy duty industrial equipment would need a higher amount of power.

Edited November 22, 2013 by KhaosCorp

[XanderTek]

The big advantage of this new system is that you'll be able to concentrate all your solar energy satellites into a low Kerbol network and deploy only relays in orbit of local bodies, to let you receive power at night and such.

A microwave receiver that points directly at the transmitter is very possible, it just needs a suitable model with an appropriate pivot and the code is fairly straightforward. The existing receivers don't have such a capability, so can only point in a fixed direction. The thermal receivers coming in 0.8 are also perhaps a little more forgiving in that they can receive power side on - but from any side.

Sounds good! Just a (hopefully) small request: Would it be possible to give us access in the config files to a variable that determines how much the power attenuates with angle? Or alternatively, specifies the angle range where optimal power is received? That way we could tinker around with making the receivers more forgiving without any need for you to alter your vision of how the parts should work by default.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

edit: I should mention I have changed the large size drill and converter to run on MJ rather than electric charge...makes more sense heavy duty industrial equipment would need a higher amount of power.

I don't see the logic. A high-torque electrical induction motor still runs on electricity... Doesn't matter if it's small or industrial scale.

[Eadrom]

Ran across this video whilst traipsing around YouTube. Some relevant background info for the upcoming thorium fueled nuke reactor option.