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

[Fractal_UK]

Wait, unupgraded fission reactor? Have you tried to swap fuel to ThF4?

Yeah, that's a good call. Using Thorium fuel will give you some more thrust and a tiny bit more specific impulse.

I'm cheating a bit because I'm using my latest dev build that has some atmospheric optimisations in but this is my early/mid-career mode fission plane. This thing is still by no means quick and by no means powerful but it will fly and deliver experiments all over Kerbin without having to worry about refueling.

[jrandom]

Your problem appears to be occurring when the B9 intakes load - the same B9 intakes that I use on almost all my ships. A modification is made to all the air intakes in the game to permit them to make them produce IntakeAtm in addition to IntakeAir, after that you're getting a whole load of NullReferenceExceptions. I fly those same intakes constantly with no problems.

I did some more tests, and the problem seems to be localized to the rescaled FASA gemini parts. If I put the FASA Gemini pod on launch clamps, everything works as normal. If I attach *any* part to it, I get SuperWind. Using a rescaled Mk1-2 and attached fuel tank does not exhibit the problem, so there's something veeery weird going on with the rescaled FASA parts. No idea what that might be.

[AtilaElari]

Do you have the latest version? I fixed, as far as I was aware, the only two ways this could happen in the 0.8.2 update.

Yp, I have 0.8.1. Thanks for pointing that out.

[AtilaElari]

Try to guess what's going on here

[wasmic]

Try to guess what's going on here

My first guess would be science.

[AtilaElari]

Deploying and retracting radiators can be used to "walk" 80-tons spacecraft on the surface... I wonder if this was an intended use.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Attach some Heavy ER Lasers, a few PPCs, and some LRM20s and we're good to go.

[forsaken1111]

I don't have fusion reactors yet, just fission, and with a plane consisting of the smallest single person cockpit, a 1.5m inline radiator, a 1.5m fission reactor, a thermal turbojet, stock delta wings with stock control surfaces added, three landing gear (two back, one forward), two radially mounted stock air intakes and one center rear tail fin, I get 12kn of thrust and barely can get above 60m/s, it just barely flies, barely.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

Oh! Sorry I misread fission as fusion.

Yeah fission fed turbojets are just barely flyable but not really worthwhile as a platform to do anything beyond fly a long distance on the planet. I have dropped them into the atmosphere from space before to explore EVE though!

[Lightwarrior]

This is good example of how new technology may be worse than old one before solutions based on it are properly developed, tested, and improved based on test results. Such things regularly happen IRL, and this is what i love this mod for.

Without reactor upgrade i would prefer stock turbojets as it is way faster and more practical. On kerbin of course, not on eve.

But after reactor upgrade this combination (1.25 fission reactor + thermal turbojet) becomes not only usefull and practical, but very powerfull. This is what i ended up doing today with those small fission reactor powered test plane:

[Eadrom]

I am still having a couple issues with the fusion reactor at high time warp. A simple test ship of a 1.25m thermal nozzle, 1.25m fusion reactor, 1.25m generator, small LOF tank, and a 1-crew pod. This actually works for me now at max time warp. Fusion reactor stays on and I get the expected behavior I've come to know and love from the fission reactors.

My issue arises when I replace the crew pod with a 1.25m probe core and a comm dish (remote tech). At 10,000x time warp, MJ dips down a bit, then stabilizes at around 60% of max MJ amount. At 100,000x time warp, all power gets drained from the ship. I can't tell if this is because the reactor shuts down and the probe core and comm dish suck all the power or another issue. The speed at which I lose power might suggest that the reactor is consuming the 7MW it needs to stay turned on, but for some reason isn't generating power, so it just drains stored MJ until the reactor dies, then the generator consumes the last bit of thermal power for a little MJ with powers the probe core and comm dish for a brief period. At that point, the ship is then completely power dead.

I have a sneaky feeling this might be related to RemoteTech. Maybe briefly losing communications with Mission Control is turning off the fusion reactor? Anyone else that plays with RemoteTech2 able to duplicate my situation? I have another install without RemoteTech. I'll give it a try and see if I get the same issue.

Edit:

Nope. Still having this issue without RemoteTech. Used an identical probe ship as above, minus a comm dish. At 1,000x speed, MJ flickered a bit then capped out. At 10,000x time warp, MJ drained down to exactly 3,000/5,000. When I accelerated to 100,000x time warp, MJ dropped down to zero, then all power died as the game ramped up to 100,000x speed. I'd say around 80,000x speed or so is when the ship died.

I think what might be happening is that the time step change is too much for the resource manager. Even with just the probe core and a single fusion reactor I think I run out of MJ before the resource manager realizes what's going on and is able to stabilize the power situation. I'm thinking that if this is the problem, larger ships with more MJ storage capacity probably won't have this problem as they will have enough MJ left over after the time stamp scaling up to 100,000x to keep the fusion reactors online.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Eadrom

[Lightwarrior]

This is those problem with EC at high timewarp which was discussed above. It seems to happen only when some equipment on ship consumes more EC than is generated by something other than MJ->EC conversion. For me workaround is to place some stock RTG-s and minimize power usage during timewarp... or just add 0.625m fission reactor...

Edited December 6, 2013 by Lightwarrior

[Eadrom]

I added another stage with an additional 8 1.25m fusion reactor/generators. Brings my MJ capacity up to 45,000. At 10,000x time warp, MJ was fluttering just tiny bit below max. Once again, when I increased time warp to 100,000x, as actual time warp ramped up from 10,000x to 100,000x, MJ drained away and the ship lost all power.

Per lightwarrior's suggestion, I added some RTG's. Two had no difference except EC stayed full from the RTG's. I observed no difference in how MJ behaved. I then launched with 8 RTG's. Same behavior up to 10,000x. However, when I went to 100,000x time warp, MJ drained down to around 3,500/45,000 and stayed there. I dropped down to 10,000x time warp and MJ filled back up to fluttering just below full. Toggled 100,000x time warp again and this time the ship lost all MJ just like in all previous launches.

I think for now, I will just have to use fusion reactors only on vessels large enough to also equip a 62.5cm fission reactor.

[forsaken1111]

I am assembling a ship in orbit right now (all I have left is the transfer stage!) which uses a 1.25m thorium fission reactor for main power but that is only active when the ship is doing research. Any other time I have two long duration 62.5cm uranium fission reactors running to keep the lights on.

The transfer stage will be an orange tank with several 2.5m reactors/thermal rockets. I'm designing it now and it will go up tonight I think. This craft is bound for moho so I'll need a lot of dv to get there.

[NotCoach]

I added another stage with an additional 8 1.25m fusion reactor/generators. Brings my MJ capacity up to 45,000. At 10,000x time warp, MJ was fluttering just tiny bit below max. Once again, when I increased time warp to 100,000x, as actual time warp ramped up from 10,000x to 100,000x, MJ drained away and the ship lost all power.

Per lightwarrior's suggestion, I added some RTG's. Two had no difference except EC stayed full from the RTG's. I observed no difference in how MJ behaved. I then launched with 8 RTG's. Same behavior up to 10,000x. However, when I went to 100,000x time warp, MJ drained down to around 3,500/45,000 and stayed there. I dropped down to 10,000x time warp and MJ filled back up to fluttering just below full. Toggled 100,000x time warp again and this time the ship lost all MJ just like in all previous launches.

I think for now, I will just have to use fusion reactors only on vessels large enough to also equip a 62.5cm fission reactor.

Not a reply specifically to you Eadrom, but maybe an idea how to fix this problem.

Couldn't MJ just simply be frozen at whatever value it is at time warp 1x when time warping above 1x as a work around? Forgive me is that sounds ignorant since I am not a programmer, and so I have no idea what the limitations in this game are, but this seems rather straightforward and simple as a fix. The only check you would need during time warp is whether or not your ship can still produce MJ. If it can't, because you ran all your fuel out during time warp, MJ immediately drops to zero (or is used up).

[Ratzap]

I've also been playing around with the thermal jet. Anything less than the AM reactors has a TWR less than 1. The fusion has mechjeb thinking it should have 1.07 but max accelleration won't go over 7.3m/s2

AM of course is nuts, TWR 3+ right off the launchpad and it gets sillier swapping to liquid fuel further up. Still, it's an easy way to make an SSTO with bags of dV once in space. I might see if I can jiggle the designe to get a warp on there too.

[forsaken1111]

If you mean the thermal turbojet, it doesn't need a TWR higher than 1 to get to orbit. You can do it with an upgraded nuclear reactor.

If you're talking about the thermal rocket, yeah its not really a launch engine until you get antimatter or unless you have a lot of microwave transmitters around and a thermal receiver.

[Donziboy2]

I've also been playing around with the thermal jet. Anything less than the AM reactors has a TWR less than 1. The fusion has mechjeb thinking it should have 1.07 but max accelleration won't go over 7.3m/s2

AM of course is nuts, TWR 3+ right off the launchpad and it gets sillier swapping to liquid fuel further up. Still, it's an easy way to make an SSTO with bags of dV once in space. I might see if I can jiggle the designe to get a warp on there too.

I posted this 3 pages ago...... MOAR Intakes!!!

[Lightwarrior]

Per lightwarrior's suggestion, I added some RTG's. Two had no difference except EC stayed full from the RTG's. I observed no difference in how MJ behaved. I then launched with 8 RTG's. Same behavior up to 10,000x. However, when I went to 100,000x time warp, MJ drained down to around 3,500/45,000 and stayed there. I dropped down to 10,000x time warp and MJ filled back up to fluttering just below full. Toggled 100,000x time warp again and this time the ship lost all MJ just like in all previous launches.

Yes, and my mistake here was that i thought only about EC not going to zero (because it can cause some problems too) and it worked. I never actually tried to run fusion reactors at high warp because fitting 0,3T tiny reactor realy is not a problem.

[db48x]

I added another stage with an additional 8 1.25m fusion reactor/generators. Brings my MJ capacity up to 45,000. At 10,000x time warp, MJ was fluttering just tiny bit below max. Once again, when I increased time warp to 100,000x, as actual time warp ramped up from 10,000x to 100,000x, MJ drained away and the ship lost all power.

Per lightwarrior's suggestion, I added some RTG's. Two had no difference except EC stayed full from the RTG's. I observed no difference in how MJ behaved. I then launched with 8 RTG's. Same behavior up to 10,000x. However, when I went to 100,000x time warp, MJ drained down to around 3,500/45,000 and stayed there. I dropped down to 10,000x time warp and MJ filled back up to fluttering just below full. Toggled 100,000x time warp again and this time the ship lost all MJ just like in all previous launches.

I think for now, I will just have to use fusion reactors only on vessels large enough to also equip a 62.5cm fission reactor.

This is actually a core bug. It's been reported many times since this mod got started, and it can even happen with just stock parts. Fractal_UK has tried several ways of fixing it, and it is better than it used to be. I will try to explain why it happens.

Imagine a craft with a single small stock solar panel on it which is producing 2 electric charge per second. The game divides this rate up by your frame rate, and adds that much to your electric charge per frame. So if you are running at 30fps, then it adds .06666 charge to your batteries every frame. Likewise, if you have some device that requires power, such as a command pod, it divides the power usage rate by your frame rate, and deducts that much from your batteries every frame. For the sake of explanation, let's assume the command pod requires 2 electric charge per second. This means that every frame the solar panel adds .0666 ec and the pod deducts .0666 ec, and the total stays exactly the same.

Now you want to time accelerate. The game still adds and deducts once per frame, but each frame represents a longer period of time. At 10x, each frame represents not one thirtieth of a second but one third of a second, and the game must add and subtract 0.666 charge each frame. At 100x it must deal with units of 6.666 charge, at 1000x 66.666 charge and so on. At some point the amount deducted each frame goes above the amount you can store, and the pod shuts off because it doesn't have enough power; you don't really notice this because you cannot control your craft in time warp.

The fusion reactor, on the other hand, must consume 7 megawatts per second in order to produce any power. At some point the amount deducted per frame will be more than you have stored, and the reactor will produce no power that frame; it couldn't run the lasers that compress the fuel pellets. At 100,000x it needs to deduct 23,333 megajoules per frame (at 30 fps, it's higher if the fps is lower), and you don't have that much available.

I don't think Fractal_UK has ever said so explicitly, but I suspect that the reason reactors come with a free 1000 megajoules of storage is so that you can timewarp at the lower levels.

[Fractal_UK]

This is those problem with EC at high timewarp which was discussed above. It seems to happen only when some equipment on ship consumes more EC than is generated by something other than MJ->EC conversion. For me workaround is to place some stock RTG-s and minimize power usage during timewarp... or just add 0.625m fission reactor...

This issue will finally be resolved in the next update. I'd like to also incorporate the improved thermal mechanics into this update, that part needs a little bit more tweaking (I've got it working fine but I don't have the balance quite right yet).

At some point the amount deducted per frame will be more than you have stored, and the reactor will produce no power that frame; it couldn't run the lasers that compress the fuel pellets. At 100,000x it needs to deduct 23,333 megajoules per frame (at 30 fps, it's higher if the fps is lower), and you don't have that much available.

I don't think Fractal_UK has ever said so explicitly, but I suspect that the reason reactors come with a free 1000 megajoules of storage is so that you can timewarp at the lower levels.

Resource storage doesn't actually matter very with resource managed resources, in principle, there wouldn't be a major issue with having no storage at all. Radiators running at 0 WasteHeat but still having an elevated temperature is an example of this. The stock game's resource system does function in the way you describe however.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Fractal_UK

[forsaken1111]

This issue will finally be resolved in the next update. I'd like to also incorporate the improved thermal mechanics into this update, that part needs a little bit more tweaking (I've got it working fine but I don't have the balance quite right yet).

Resource storage doesn't actually matter very with resource managed resources, in principle, there wouldn't be a major issue with having no storage at all. The stock game's resource system does function in the way you describe however.

Oh that's exciting. I can stop adding small reactors

[pantheis]

Thanks everyone for their ideas on the thermal turbojet.

Were the phased microwave arrays designed to have to point at each other to work? That seems like it would be an unworkable solution in KSP where you can't force craft to stay aligned to each other over great distances. I setup a large (3x 3.75 fission reactors) rover that I parked at KSP, stuck a phased microwave transceiver on it, set it to transmit, then went to launch a craft with a receiver on it. I noticed that I was getting no power until I put the receiver on the side of the craft facing where I had parked the rover. A similar experience happened in orbit where power received changed drastically depending on where I was in orbit over KSP. While I agree this is more realistic, I'd like to know how power transmission can be at all useful with this limitation?

[forsaken1111]

Thanks everyone for their ideas on the thermal turbojet.

Were the phased microwave arrays designed to have to point at each other to work? That seems like it would be an unworkable solution in KSP where you can't force craft to stay aligned to each other over great distances. I setup a large (3x 3.75 fission reactors) rover that I parked at KSP, stuck a phased microwave transceiver on it, set it to transmit, then went to launch a craft with a receiver on it. I noticed that I was getting no power until I put the receiver on the side of the craft facing where I had parked the rover. A similar experience happened in orbit where power received changed drastically depending on where I was in orbit over KSP. While I agree this is more realistic, I'd like to know how power transmission can be at all useful with this limitation?

The microwave receiver must point at the transmitting craft. The transmitter's orientation is irrelevant.

I personally don't like this, and would prefer a 'lock on' system like remotetech uses but I just don't use the transmitters much because of it.

[LORDPrometheus]

Does the gamma ray spectrometer actually do anything or is it a coming feature because I've put several craft in orbit with them with and without megajoule power and have had nothing even remotely indicative of it working

[forsaken1111]

Does the gamma ray spectrometer actually do anything or is it a coming feature because I've put several craft in orbit with them with and without megajoule power and have had nothing even remotely indicative of it working

Eh, it worked fine for me in the last version. I haven't tried it with 8.2 yet.

It just puts little colored balls on the resource points which are in your craft's LoS.