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

[Karhutt]

I've been trying to add EVA collectability to the impactor experiment.

It was fairly easy to add it to the magnetometer but I can't seem to get the impactor working.

I had assumed it would be as easy as adding;

dataIsCollectable = True

collectActionName = Take Data

interactionRange = 1.2

to "science.cfg"

Since this had all the parameters for the impactor experiment, but after that didn't work I'm at a loss.

Anyone figured this out or maybe fixed in upcoming update?

I realise it sends with full value but playing with remotetech and the data size is rather large which adds power requirements that I don't want to deal with since I'm returning anyway.

I could just add multiple accelerometers to the pod and bring it back that way but it's a clumsy solution.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Karhutt

[merendel]

@karhutt Have you tried to see if the device could store multiple experiments strait up? I didnt think to try that last time I ran one although I did a colect/transmit 3 times in a row while the first was still transmiting and it just queued up the transmissions like normal without a hitch. Then agian I stuck a tiny reactor on my transmiting probe so power was not a concern.

Then agian I'd probably go the inelegant solution and just strap 8-16 of those things to the return vehicle, part count be damned its light enough to not impact the dV that much.

Edited February 19, 2014 by merendel

[EdisonMaxwell]

Will increasing the number of accelerometers on a celestial body up to a max of 6 increase the amount of science gained from the experiment? I've put 6 probes on the Mun and Minmus.

Also, since I saw no replies to my previous post:

Since the Open resource system now exists is it possible for the resource collection KSPI to work with any planet mod? I see that there are ground resource maps in the wap plugin folder. How do I add resources to new planets? I understand the syntax in the atmospheric and oceanic resource configs. For ground based resources, what I can see is that you've rendered clouds in photoshop or a related program, saved them as .png files and named them as body_resource. If I do that right now and start a game, will it work? I haven't installed any planet mods fearing a breakdown of KSPI.

How do I define antimatter collection for them?

[VaporTrail]

Out of curiosity, I'm experimenting with a microwave lifter design... but my test lifter doesn't go very far.

Basically I build the launch clamps with control pods, reactors (theoretical output in the gigawatt range), and MW Xceivers (pointing straight up), and the lifter has a thermal reciever. Immediately off the pad I don't have much of a problem, but at about 500m the recieved power seems to drop off pretty sharply. I make about 1500m max altitude before falling back toward the pad. It's not fuel, as the engine continues to burn all the way back down (and thrust starts building back up).

Is power transmission in atmosphere actually gimped to that level? Or is there something I'm missing?

[Shad0wCatcher]

@VaporTrail: Do you have a relay network set up? If not then you might be running into an issue of the beamed power not making it to your craft.

[VaporTrail]

No. Like I've said, I've integrated the reactors and transmitters directly into the launch pad by attaching them to the launch clamps... Let me grab a screen cap, easier to show than explain...

Here we go.

As you can see, I've got a minimum of 13GW at a range of less than two kilometers... (upon launch). Highest this particular arrangement has made it is 1839m or thereabouts before falling back.

Edited February 19, 2014 by VaporTrail

[Lightwarrior]

First of all thermal engines with receivers have really low efficiency, probably not worth of effort. Use plasma engines instead.

And second - receivers are directional. Thermal one receive only from sides. This is why you do not receive power from launchpad. You will need relay satelites for this to work.

Exactly what you need are 3+ satelites in orbit which can "see" (direct line of sight) each other and power source (transmitter with reactors) which can be located anywhere on kerbin or in kerbin orbit once you have those relays.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[VaporTrail]

Thats what I'm missing then. Knew about the directionality of the electrical based recievers... wasn't aware of the limitations on the thermals.

Hm. Gave me an idea though... Be back with another cap in a bit.

[Ricardo.b]

im having bugs with science experiments. the magnetometer does not show up the science experiment GUI and deep filed survey shows its GUI but when clicked, nothing happens.

this bug from the magnetometer followed me from update 0.22, 0.23 with latest interstellar mod still not showing the experiment action buttom

thanks for any help

[VaporTrail]

Well, it's a bit of a kludge, and it has a really nasty tendency to tumble immediately off the pad, but it flies.

It flies like a housefly, (utterly random, even with mechjeb on the stick, and keeps trying to run into stuff).

Still just putzing around with thermal based rockets. If I get serious about MW power, I'm going to have quite a few sats in orbit, probably with multiple terawatts available for whatever. I've got a few ideas for solar based orbital power farms, but it just takes so MUCH solar to run a microwave transmitter that nuke reactors are probably going to be easier.

Edited February 19, 2014 by VaporTrail

[celem]

You can do orbital solar farms, but you will need to get them down inside Moho orbit before they start making enough to run the stuff this mod adds. I have 4 solar farms in a very low solar orbit, each has 4 gigantors and this setup provides a reasonable chunk of power, with the advantage that i always know exactly where to point the reciever.

Note of course you need to add lots of radiators to cool the farms when they are this low.

You dont need too many sats for a strong network, I only launched 3 relay sats, to 900km in an even triangle they give complete LoS in Kerbin SoI (barring some moon shadows). You then just keep churning out the reactor transmtters. Many of mine are parked in the grasslands 10km west of KSC, where they beam the power out to the network. As far as I can see atmospheric attenuation is only applied if the receiver is in atmosphere, so this doesnt hurt me. Note reactors on the surface of Kerbin are hard to cool, but the advantage is you can rover or parachute them into position, avoiding some super hvy launches.

My Questions: Im trying to economise some designs and am wondering exactly which aspects of a relay situation need directional transceivers and a proper line of sight? The craft that ultimately wants to use power has receivers pointing as many directions as possible to hook into the network fully. How many transceivers does a relay need? Up to now i've been studding these as well, likewise transmitters. So... do I need transmitter and relays pointing in all directions just like i do with the reciever craft? Or are one or both of these aspects a more simple 'LoS to craft' rather than 'LoS to transceiver'? Main reason im asking is that im struggling to make large reactors, since between radiators and transceievers real-estate becomes an issue.

Secondly. Whats the use of the Attila? I must be reading the tooltip wrong, or mis-understanding. From what I can see for equivalent sizes it has the same thrust/mw as the plasma thruster, same mass, worse isp and a worse max power draw (and therefore potential thrust). Whats the deal with these things?

Edited February 19, 2014 by celem

[juraleona]

Use boulder co. texture compressor

Well I can tell you for sure that there is no inherent conflict between the 3 mods listed [...]

I am using Active Texture Management by rbray89 and problem still occurs. And I want to highlight that problem occurs with or without texture compression.

Also, Interstellar on new copy of game is lacking those textures too.... Can somebody just send me textures for those parts:

- 1.25m and 62.5cm fussion reactor

- Small and normal radial radiator.

- All folding radiators

- OMEGA and GEKKO fusion reactors.

And I may just found the problem. in .cfg file for radial radiator mesh is loaded from "mesh = model.mu", yet only mesh I see INSIDE the folder of radial radiator is "rheat.mu".

It may be just me, but it seems to be the problem, still, I do not know anything about modding KSP so I leave it up to you: is this a source of my problems or not?

[Lightwarrior]

VaporTrail,

You really do not need all those gigantic things. Plasma thruster will produce ~250KN of thrust using just 4GW with argon as fuel, so with your 13GW you can launch something heavy enough. Also with those "terawatts of power" you will need too much radiators on receiving craft, so it will be unusable.

celem,

Actually reactors in atmosphere are WAY easier to cool than in space.

Only receivers are really directional, relays only need LoS between crafts as far as i know.

AS for Attila... one good thing about it is that it gives almost the same results with LF as MPD will give with argon, so you can use all variety of stock fuel tanks, not just those rescaled to 2.5m xenon tank.

[Donziboy2]

First of all thermal engines with receivers have really low efficiency, probably not worth of effort. Use plasma engines instead.

And second - receivers are directional. Thermal one receive only from sides. This is why you do not receive power from launchpad. You will need relay satelites for this to work.

Exactly what you need are 3+ satelites in orbit which can "see" (direct line of sight) each other and power source (transmitter with reactors) which can be located anywhere on kerbin or in kerbin orbit once you have those relays.

I have had no problem launching 80T payloads with a rocket that weighs 170T using just LF and 1 Thermal Rocket and receiver. The important thing is to have relays that can keep the LoS angle low so you dont have losses from high angles.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Donziboy2

[agentexeider]

BEHOLD, My next generation of Interplanetary Explorer Cruiser, the Interplanetary 2A

After much time, research, effort and will, My space program has moved to the next level, to faster than light propulsion!!!

What took it's older brothers months to journey, now takes only a few hours to this new wondrous craft.

Again I say behold.

-Æ

[Lightwarrior]

I have had no problem launching 80T payloads with a rocket that weighs 170T using just LF and 1 Thermal Rocket and receiver. The important thing is to have relays that can keep the LoS angle low so you dont have losses from high angles.

Sure, but that's still very inefficient (ISP is really close to chemical engines in atmosphere). Same payload can be launched using maximun ~20T launcher with plasma thruster and few argon tanks. And it requires absolutely the same infrastructure.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[SV-ESK]

Since the Open resource system now exists is it possible for the resource collection KSPI to work with any planet mod? I see that there are ground resource maps in the wap plugin folder. How do I add resources to new planets? I understand the syntax in the atmospheric and oceanic resource configs. For ground based resources, what I can see is that you've rendered clouds in photoshop or a related program, saved them as .png files and named them as body_resource. If I do that right now and start a game, will it work? I haven't installed any planet mods fearing a breakdown of KSPI.

How do I define antimatter collection for them?

For ground based resources are not just *.png. It have configs too. And there are MM-configs for atmospheric and oceanic resources in same folder.

I have tried to make configs for Urania pack, but it does not work.

Antimatter flux is procedural https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/blob/master/FNPlugin/VanAllen.cs but it does not work too.

If you hyperedit craft to new planet orbit - antimattercollector will show 0 flux

If you hyperedit self to stock planet and then hyperedit to new - antimattercollector does not update flux value. And does not collect.

On new planets alt-F2 debug window will flood:

[Exception]: ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.

Parameter name: index

[Exception]: ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.

Parameter name: index

[Exception]: ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.

Parameter name: index

I search in ORS sources and found problem(for planetfactory mod users):

https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/blob/master/OpenResourceSystem/ORSGameConstants.cs

In PluginHelper.cs these values iterates in else-if construction to set science coefficients. Default value is 0, so new planets will have 0 science for labs, computer cores and impact experiments. May be some similar cause problem with resources

Edited February 19, 2014 by SV-ESK

[VaporTrail]

I'm still working on going interplanetary, really. I've got a design for a scaleable solar sat that will (should) be able to turn out quite a bit of power even in Kerbin orbit. Of course, it's HUGE, but meh, Kerbals.

I'm toying with the idea of scaling down the transcievers (both the deployable and the static, with transmission stats to match) so I can get some smaller and more streamlined designs, but I'm not a modder. The size I'd be shooting for is for the resized deployable to be the same rough size (and capability) as the normal static.

[DailyFrankPeter]

And second - receivers are directional.

Incidentally, does anyone know what the precision the relative position of microwave antennas is checked? I've been seeing quite all-over-the-place power readings with a 'microwave lifter' myself (it can change from full power to half with just a save>reload), and I'm thinking it might be due to the fact that transmitters and receiver are in the same scene (i.e. wihtin 2.5km) - the ones that are 2400km apart always see each other fine.

Edited February 19, 2014 by DailyFrankPeter

[BigD145]

BEHOLD, My next generation of Interplanetary Explorer Cruiser, the Interplanetary 2A

Ah, the old interstellar parts mod.

[merendel]

Also, Interstellar on new copy of game is lacking those textures too.... Can somebody just send me textures for those parts:

And I may just found the problem. in .cfg file for radial radiator mesh is loaded from "mesh = model.mu", yet only mesh I see INSIDE the folder of radial radiator is "rheat.mu".

It may be just me, but it seems to be the problem, still, I do not know anything about modding KSP so I leave it up to you: is this a source of my problems or not?

rheat.mu is the only mesh in that folder for me as well. It should also have d.png and n_NRM.png not sure thats your problem as mine works fine.

Celem. I mentioned a few pages back that the VAB seems to have the wrong info on the thrust for the attilla. The values for the VAB seem copy/pasted from the plasma with the ISP's updated. I actualy overlooked the things at first glance myself for the same reason as it appeared to be a nerfed plasma. Actualy useing the thigns however they have monstorous thrust If your network is not powerful enough to lift a payload into orbit consider puting one of those underneath as a lift stage

[Boamere]

http://i.imgur.com/DrkSMBr.png

BEHOLD, My next generation of Interplanetary Explorer Cruiser, the Interplanetary 2A

After much time, research, effort and will, My space program has moved to the next level, to faster than light propulsion!!!

What took it's older brothers months to journey, now takes only a few hours to this new wondrous craft.

Again I say behold.

-Æ

It isn't faster than light

Just a fraction of it

[Fractal_UK]

I mentioned a few pages back that the VAB seems to have the wrong info on the thrust for the attilla. The values for the VAB seem copy/pasted from the plasma with the ISP's updated.

Yep, it's currently calculated from a fixed value so they show up the same. I've fixed this for the next update now.

[vikingputin]

I want a Kethane miner... capable to launch and couple with another vessel.. plz help!

[fenderzilla]

How can I make the atmospheric scoops take in CO2 on eve and duna?