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

[Shad0wCatcher]

It helps also Taki to have relay stations in multiple planetary orbits. In order to make full use of the Thermal Transceivers you absolutely need a solid infrastructure of them in place before using them to power anything.

[Rizendell]

As for how the transceivers function: Transmitters and Relays are not directional. Since they are on separate craft, it is abstracted away and assumed that they rotate to provide optimal coverage. Receivers are directional, and must be pointed toward the transmitter or relay to get the best efficiency. As your angle increases, your efficiency drops, eventually going to zero at a 90 degree angle or above. I recommend putting several receivers on your craft and rolling just before any burns in order to find the angle that provides the most power.Relay satellites only need one transceiver, set to relay mode.

@Fractal_UK : What would one have to do to the mod files to make the receivers non-directional (Omni-directional), or would you be willing and able to model and animate an arm that would articulate in the correct direction? Or even just adding a receiver that is non-directional at a loss of transmission? This is really the only issue I've run into with the mod so far. I would really like to get into using it more, but being forced to use the robotics mod to manually correct the receiver angle is just a kick in the nuts for me. If my frikin kerbals can handle nukes, I want dish's that orient themselves in the right direction.

[Jivaii]

@Fractal_UK : What would one have to do to the mod files to make the receivers non-directional (Omni-directional), or would you be willing and able to model and animate an arm that would articulate in the correct direction? Or even just adding a receiver that is non-directional at a loss of transmission? This is really the only issue I've run into with the mod so far. I would really like to get into using it more, but being forced to use the robotics mod to manually correct the receiver angle is just a kick in the nuts for me. If my frikin kerbals can handle nukes, I want dish's that orient themselves in the right direction.

Or you know, you just add more receivers? I haven't had any issues with the microwave mechanics at all.

[Colseg]

I have a space station orbiting Kerbin that I have been attempting to generate antimatter at using a lab, I have the full 5GJ power requirement for the lab to produce antimatter at maximum speed and a charged antimatter containment device however the lab always says it is generating 0.000000E+000mg/sec of antimatter, I have tried time accelerating both while in control of the station and while in control of other ships to no avail, it is possible the problem is being caused by one of my other installed mods however I thought I would post in case there was something I was just doing wrong.

[Rizendell]

Yes I realize that I could cover my craft in receivers, the point is; I shouldn't need more than one, and more than one or two makes things look ugly. Besides, TWR is important when you are getting low thrust. And making a motorized articulating arm that controls the dish without impacting the crafts orientation isn't nuclear physics.

[Jivaii]

Yes I realize that I could cover my craft in receivers, the point is; I shouldn't need more than one, and more than one or two makes things look ugly. Besides, TWR is important when you are getting low thrust. And making a motorized articulating arm that controls the dish without impacting the crafts orientation isn't nuclear physics.

And demanding something from a mod maker isn't all that polite.

[not-a-cylon]

finally did it.

Eve SSTO.

full album and craft link!

Edited January 24, 2014 by not-a-cylon

[AndreyATGB]

It's not that bad to use infernal robotics, all you really need are the normal and 90° hinges, it works great, the mass offset can be fixed by some reaction wheels. By receiving 5000MW in the Kerbin system the plasma thrusters have enough to make a super sonic plane if you can keep it level. My probe to Eve isn't faring so well, it only receives 400 or so even though right outside the SOI it was 2k. If I put a relay in Eve orbit will I get more than 400? Why aren't these values purely range based?

[Konnor]

finally did it.

Eve SSTO.

That's impressive, congrats.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Konnor

[sarbian]

And making a motorized articulating arm that controls the dish without impacting the crafts orientation isn't nuclear physics.

If it's so easy why don't you code it yourself and submit it to Fractal_UK ?

[AeroEngy]

Yes I realize that I could cover my craft in receivers, the point is; I shouldn't need more than one, and more than one or two makes things look ugly. Besides, TWR is important when you are getting low thrust. And making a motorized articulating arm that controls the dish without impacting the crafts orientation isn't nuclear physics.

And demanding something from a mod maker isn't all that polite.

I don't think Rizendell original comment was all that demanding and it does make sense. I find it annoying that I have to stick multiple receivers on my craft at various angles to ensure I don't have an unexpected loss of power during a gravity turn for example. From the game world perspective the Kerbals have mastered rocket science, long range microwave power, and nuclear fusions but couldn't figure out it would be more efficient to articulate a receiving dish ...

If creating an articulating receiver part model is time consuming and difficult what about just adding some sort of dead band angle where the received power remains the same thus simulating an articulating dish. So the received power doesn't start falling off until the angle is greater than 20 or 30 degrees. However, I am thankful for this mod and will graciously use whatever Fractal_UK creates because it is way beyond my skill to do so.

[AndreyATGB]

I think the way it is now is balanced and fair. If the angle requirement were to be completely removed it would become quite OP. Assuming you don't use FAR, you can just make a 10-reactor power plant on Kerbin and launch everything with plasma thrusters since they have amazing TWR close to the transmitter. At this time, it is a more powerful alternative to the ion engine with the limitation of aiming your receiver. All you need are 2 hinges from infernal robotics and you're set for ever. It takes literally 5 seconds to aim the thing correctly and the power drops off after maybe 10 or so degrees, it's pretty generous. Keep in mind this is also a game and needs to be balanced, especially since microwave isn't that late in the tech tree.

[xfrankie]

... From the game world perspective the Kerbals have mastered rocket science, long range microwave power, and nuclear fusions but couldn't figure out it would be more efficient to articulate a receiving dish ...

You can't really look at it from this perspective and still expect the mod to be balanced... A lot more things that look logical have to be sacrificed to keep it that way.

A simple example: Kerbals have advanced-enough technology to hurl nuclear reactors into space and beam the power from there, but didn't think of burying one under the ground near KSC for launch purposes (not having to drag the heavy reactor along).

Or the Tritium breeding... Again, they can produce it in space, and have enough to fill unlimited amount of fusion reactors, but they can't fill a Tritium tank in VAB (disregarding the option where you fill it with excess reactors on Launch Pad and decouple them once they're empty).

And the whole He-3 thing, if they managed to make Helium fusion work, they surely would have enough time beforehand to acquire a whole lot of He, while the reactors were still on the drawing board. You could easily assume they have a big reactor somewhere, that produces Tritium which then decays over the years. And its power output meanwhile powers your rockets via the microwaves.

Now imagine if the Kerbals actually had all these things. Just strap a few Vistas under your ship and off you go, not worrying about anything because the reactor surely isn't a small one, or the only one they have... That would kill the fun for me.

[AeroEngy]

You can't really look at it from this perspective and still expect the mod to be balanced... A lot more things that look logical have to be sacrificed to keep it that way.

A simple example: Kerbals have advanced-enough technology to hurl nuclear reactors into space and beam the power from there, but didn't think of burying one under the ground near KSC for launch purposes (not having to drag the heavy reactor along).

Or the Tritium breeding... Again, they can produce it in space, and have enough to fill unlimited amount of fusion reactors, but they can't fill a Tritium tank in VAB (disregarding the option where you fill it with excess reactors on Launch Pad and decouple them once they're empty).

And the whole He-3 thing, if they managed to make Helium fusion work, they surely would have enough time beforehand to acquire a whole lot of He, while the reactors were still on the drawing board. You could easily assume they have a big reactor somewhere, that produces Tritium which then decays over the years. And its power output meanwhile powers your rockets via the microwaves.

Now imagine if the Kerbals actually had all these things. Just strap a few Vistas under your ship and off you go, not worrying about anything because the reactor surely isn't a small one, or the only one they have... That would kill the fun for me.

I don't necessarily disagree with your points. However, you can already do all of those examples yourself. Myself and other have built large ground based reactors for power then put relays in orbit, setup tritium/He-3/antimatter breeding farms, etc. and use a fuel truck/rover to fill everything up before launch. Having to do those things myself is what makes it more realistic & fun (at least for me). I suppose I could use Infernal robotics to point a receiver myself... however from what I know of that mod (which isn't much) I don't think you can programatically point an articulated arm at something. You would have to manually keep adjusting the angle as the relay flew overhead and your orientation changed which sounds tedious. For now though I suppose I will just keep a ridiculous looking cluster of receivers pointing in various directions:rolleyes:

[Jivaii]

I don't necessarily disagree with your points. However, you can already do all of those examples yourself. Myself and other have built large ground based reactors for power then put relays in orbit, setup tritium/He-3/antimatter breeding farms, etc. and use a fuel truck/rover to fill everything up before launch. Having to do those things myself is what makes it more realistic & fun (at least for me). I suppose I could use Infernal robotics to point a receiver myself... however from what I know of that mod (which isn't much) I don't think you can programatically point an articulated arm at something. You would have to manually keep adjusting the angle as the relay flew overhead and your orientation changed which sounds tedious. For now though I suppose I will just keep a ridiculous looking cluster of receivers pointing in various directions:rolleyes:

I have Transmitter/Relay satillites in orbit. 3.75m nuke+generator on each one, I think there's 10 right now, with an extremely large power station providing master power. 150ish GW =)

[xfrankie]

Having to do those things myself is what makes it more realistic & fun

That was kind of the point of my post, it doesn't have to be overly realistic to be fun to play. (sorry if you didn't understand me, english isn't my 1st language)

For now though I suppose I will just keep a ridiculous looking cluster of receivers pointing in various directions

There is a sort of cone of about 30 or so degrees to each side where your reciever retains its best efficiency (might be wrong, I tested it only with the largest deploayble things).

My idea is to put recievers on the ship's nose, launch when orbital relay flies overhead and "chase it" with the pitch as I make the gravity turn. You don't have to point directly towards it, because as long as it remains in the recievers "cone", it will give you max power.

When facing away from Kerbin or for interplanetary burns, the only thing that comes to my mind is to have another set of relays on the edge of Kerbin's SOI towards which the ship would point, without having to have the "cluster of receivers" (I think this is the actual problem you were referring to)

[DerekL1963]

Having to do those things myself is what makes it more realistic & fun (at least for me).

That's the eternal dilemma of the mod maker... just how hardcore to make the mod. Playstyles differ greatly.

[AeroEngy]

That was kind of the point of my post, it doesn't have to be overly realistic to be fun to play. (sorry if you didn't understand me, english isn't my 1st language)

There is a sort of cone of about 30 or so degrees to each side where your reciever retains its best efficiency (might be wrong, I tested it only with the largest deploayble things).

My idea is to put recievers on the ship's nose, launch when orbital relay flies overhead and "chase it" with the pitch as I make the gravity turn. You don't have to point directly towards it, because as long as it remains in the recievers "cone", it will give you max power.

When facing away from Kerbin or for interplanetary burns, the only thing that comes to my mind is to have another set of relays on the edge of Kerbin's SOI towards which the ship would point, without having to have the "cluster of receivers" (I think this is the actual problem you were referring to)

No need to be sorry about anything

However, I don't think the bolded part is true but I could be wrong also. I think it varies directly with the cosine of the pointing error. So if you are pointing 30 degrees off from a relay you will get ~87% of the power. Similarly if you pointed 60 degrees off then you only receive 50% power (Blue line below). IF your dish could articulate up to 20 degrees (green line) then you could have 77% (cos(60-20)). See below for how I think it works vs. what I am proposing.

Again though I am perfectly happy with whatever is in Fractal's mod and not a good enough coder to attempt anything of the sort.

[Fractal_UK]

I tend to assume that in order for things to be available in the VAB, they must be 1) relatively available without being insanely expensive at the quantities specified (that said, the amount of tritium available from the start pushes this condition to the very limit) and 2) profitable to produce.

2) is fairly key because it's hard to imagine fictional companies that exist in the background on Kerbin spending the effort to produce something unless it makes them a tidy profit in the process.

Helium-3 is fairly unusual in Interstellar in that it is a stable element that is restricted but the reason is essentially the lack of availability in nature, you can't just go and mine it from somewhere (on Kerbin), you have to manufacture it. The manufacturing process that would have to be followed is the one that you can reproduce in game: Get Lithium (rare and expensive) -> Perform Tritium Breeding to get Tritium (almost zero abundance in nature, radioactive with short half-life and insanely expensive) -> Leave Tritium sitting around for several years -> Wait for Helium-3 to acculumate -> Sell Helium-3.

On Kerbin, any major drive toward adopting Helium-3 fuel would be surprising. The two main advantages of either reduced neutroncity or completely aneutronic fusion are increased reactor lifetime (due to reduced neutron embrittlement) and smaller and more efficient (direct conversion) electrical power production but these come at the cost of reduced power density and increased plasma heating costs. These requirements fit those of a space program particularly well but you'd imagine demand would be small for these materials outside of that. Most imaginary Kerbal business, you would expect, to take the easy decision of mining Lithium and selling that to the commercial energy providers and skipping a lot of expense and several year lag time on getting revenues.

Off Kerbin, you can find Helium-3 a bit more readily, in certain places, in nature but then it's in the space program's domain by default.

Real space agencies do actually struggle with some similar issues, notably the increasing unavailability of Plutonium-238, which is used for almost all RTGs but is no longer produced in any country, NASA has been buying up Russia's stockpile since 1993 but availability is now starting to run low. Since, again, it's a short half-life element, the only real way of getting it is to manufacture it with nuclear reactors.

[xfrankie]

I think it varies directly with the cosine of the pointing error. So if you are pointing 30 degrees off from a relay you will get ~87% of the power. Similarly if you pointed 60 degrees off then you only receive 50% power (Blue line below). ...

I tried that again, works within the "cone". Four identical relays in orbit, 90degrees apart. Here is what happens when I set one of them to "recieve power" a wiggle it around a bit.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/k3jSc/embed"></iframe>

in case my attempt on embedding the album doesn't work, try this: http://imgur.com/a/k3jSc#8

please ignore that fail, someone tell me how the heck do I embed albums here? pretty please?

Edited January 24, 2014 by xfrankie

[Boamere]

I tried that again, works within the "cone". Four identical relays in orbit, 90degrees apart. Here is what happens when I set one of them to "recieve power" a wiggle it around a bit.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/k3jSc/embed"></iframe>

in case my attempt on embedding the album doesn't work, try this: http://imgur.com/a/k3jSc#8

please ignore that fail, someone tell me how the heck do I embed albums here? pretty please?

To embed an album write

Finished result:

[imgur]k3jSc">Javascript is disabled. View full album

Also you will want to set up your relays to relay mode; all of them, then ships you need to power will need to be in receive mode, not the relays (the relays in relay mode don't need to be pointed at each other, only the ship you want to power will need receivers to be pointed at the relays) <--- (ignore all of this if you already have set them up in relay mode and I was being dumb)

Edited January 24, 2014 by Boamere

[xfrankie]

To embed an album write [imgur] then put your series of letters in the middle like this k3jSc then write (with a [ here)/imgur]

Thank you for your help

Edited January 24, 2014 by xfrankie
I just re-read your post properly...

[AeroEngy]

I tried that again, works within the "cone". Four identical relays in orbit, 90degrees apart. Here is what happens when I set one of them to "recieve power" a wiggle it around a bit.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/k3jSc/embed"></iframe>

in case my attempt on embedding the album doesn't work, try this: http://imgur.com/a/k3jSc#8

please ignore that fail, someone tell me how the heck do I embed albums here? pretty please?

I am 99% sure mine do not work that way. You are getting almost full power no matter where you point ... When I get home from work I am going to setup a single power transmitting craft and a separate receiving craft and do some similar pointing experiments.

In most of your pics you have more than 1 relay connect so maybe that is why you are getting such good reception at all angles.

[xfrankie]

Yes that is a bit odd, but they are spaced 90 degrees apart, so if I point it prograde it should "see" only the one relay that is before it, the other one connected might be the one that is behind. But since it is behind the reciever, it should not contribute any power. And the fourth is obviously on the other side of the planet.

Also that is the reason why there are four of them, at this altitude only three (120 degr. apart) wouldn't have line of sight – I think...

Interesting is that it retains full power even when turned upwards, that's why I was so sure there is that magical cone.

edit:

Also the power input drops rather rapidly when it gets out of the cone, easily achieving 0MW input at higher angles (like, about 80-90ish - not completely sure)

edit 2:

Just tested it, the relay stops getting any power over 90deg.

However the cone might be there only because they are so close together, as in if one was close to Sun/Kerbol and the other at Jool, there might not be any simillar behavior (but don't take my word on this one)

Edited January 24, 2014 by xfrankie

[RadHazard]

I don't think Rizendell original comment was all that demanding and it does make sense. I find it annoying that I have to stick multiple receivers on my craft at various angles to ensure I don't have an unexpected loss of power during a gravity turn for example. From the game world perspective the Kerbals have mastered rocket science, long range microwave power, and nuclear fusions but couldn't figure out it would be more efficient to articulate a receiving dish ...

If creating an articulating receiver part model is time consuming and difficult what about just adding some sort of dead band angle where the received power remains the same thus simulating an articulating dish. So the received power doesn't start falling off until the angle is greater than 20 or 30 degrees. However, I am thankful for this mod and will graciously use whatever Fractal_UK creates because it is way beyond my skill to do so.

Why not stick some relays in a stationary orbit over KSC? You can space them out so that you get good coverage over your entire launch profile. You won't get perfect 100% transmission, but you could always increase your power supply somewhat to make up for it.