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

[WaveFunctionP]

I think 110 GW may be a bit too much network power.

Hmm, now I'm getting 220 GW. I wonder what the max I have in orbit is.

Edited March 15, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[Bertilak]

Hi, all! Sorry up front for asking a question which has probably been answered multiple times already. I promise I did my share of good faith googling and made good use of the "search thread" tool first, so blame it on lack of finesse rather than lack of effort. ^.^;

Anyway: is there any early way to generate Thermal Power? I understand that molten salt reactors are supposed to be your first basic source, but I haven't been able to find any information on where they are in the tech tree. I tried the interstellar wiki, this threadnought and checking the part configs; that last bit, maybe I'm just blind, but I can't even find a part file for them (double-checked the fission reactor files in case they were a sub-entry; no luck there either).

I know other reactors unlock with nuclear propulsion, which I'm reasonably close to, but I've already unlocked the electrical generators down an entirely different branch–and I'd like to think that I've missed something, rather than think that they're intentionally just dead parts until I go back and unlock that other node.

For reference, I'm using the KSP Interstellar tech tree, and I'm on version 0.10.3 (at least that's the last entry in the changelog file; I don't recall what the version was when I downloaded it, so I assume that's what version I have).

[Eeke]

Is there a way to moderate the amount of Power a Nuclear reactor generates?

Mine always sits at "Active:40%". Other than upgrades, will I ever see it go above "40%?" and is there a way to say.. bring it to 30%?

[merendel]

Is there a way to moderate the amount of Power a Nuclear reactor generates?

Mine always sits at "Active:40%". Other than upgrades, will I ever see it go above "40%?" and is there a way to say.. bring it to 30%?

Reactors have a minimum throttle setting that they can not fall below. If you only need 30% of the reactors output but it has a minimum of 40% then the extra 10% is just wasted. If power demand is higher than its minimum throttle they automaticly ramp up to meet demand asuming they have sufficent max output to do so. You must be useing the sethlans series reactors. Acording to the part file those have a minthrottle of 40. If you want a lower idle power output try the reactors that run off UF4 instead of UN. Those have a min throttle of 25%.

[RSF77]

Most people use Active Texture Management mod.

Yea I already have that and reduced texture packs for everything that has it, but I am almost at the memory limit wall and I can't install any other big mods in all their glory. If I uninstall any of them I lose half my crafts.

Oh well, I'll just wait and hope one day KSPI gets a texture pack too (or squad itself solves the problem).

Edited March 16, 2014 by RSF77

[merendel]

Yea I already have that and reduced texture packs for everything that has it, but I am almost at the memory limit wall and I can't install any other big mods in all their glory. If I uninstall any of them I lose half my crafts.

Oh well, I'll just wait and hope one day KSPI gets a texture pack too (or squad itself solves the problem).

What mods are you runing? Myself I'm runing B9 KW, firespiter, KSPI, KAS, and Interplanetary launchpads as the main mods that add parts. With just the standard version of ATM and no extra reduction packs I hover a bit under 2gigs. I figure I could shove a couple more heavy footprint mods in before I have to upgrade to the agressive version of ATM or add specific reduction packs on top of it.

[Eeke]

Reactors have a minimum throttle setting that they can not fall below. If you only need 30% of the reactors output but it has a minimum of 40% then the extra 10% is just wasted. If power demand is higher than its minimum throttle they automaticly ramp up to meet demand asuming they have sufficent max output to do so. You must be useing the sethlans series reactors. Acording to the part file those have a minthrottle of 40. If you want a lower idle power output try the reactors that run off UF4 instead of UN. Those have a min throttle of 25%.

I am indeed. I understand the minimum part but I didn't understand the auto throttling. It's something I suspected but try as I might I can't get the power to go above 40%.

Granted all I did was put a Thermal Rocket under the reactor but the goal is to get that % up so the reactor gets hotter -> thermal rocket gets more thrust.

So far though I can have the thing run for days and not only do I lose all my E charge eventually for some strange reason (despite having very little active) I can't get the reactor to go beyond 40% even with the rocket on full throttle.

[Rabada]

This is quite an excellent mod! Until now, I've only messed around a bit with this mod in sandbox mode, however I have started my first career mode game with this mod and I have some questions. I have read the wiki, the faq, and about the last 40-50 pages of this thread, watched Manley's Interstellar twice, so I hope these are not common nuisance questions that get asked all the time.

1: How much science will it take to complete the Insterstellar tech tree?

I'm not looking for a number, I'm more curious about what I will be doing after I finish my Mun and Minmas Biome landings and my interstellar probes.

2: I noticed that Scott Manley installed Infernal Robotics in order to position his microwave receiver dish for some of his space craft. Is there an easier way to point your dishes without using additional mods?

3: And finally for now, does anyone have any tips or suggestions for my first career mode playthrough with Insterstellar? Right now I am doing science on the Mun, and I am about to start unlocking the interstellar advanced techs for the first time.

[RSF77]

What mods are you runing? Myself I'm runing B9 KW, firespiter, KSPI, KAS, and Interplanetary launchpads as the main mods that add parts. With just the standard version of ATM and no extra reduction packs I hover a bit under 2gigs. I figure I could shove a couple more heavy footprint mods in before I have to upgrade to the agressive version of ATM or add specific reduction packs on top of it.

Pretty much those, minus KSPI and add Novapunch, NearFuture, Kethane, MagicIndustries plus a bunch of other little mods and parts I made. I haven't paid attention to the exact memory usage actually I just know from trying that if I add anything else big KSP starts to crash, it runs pretty stable right now.

[Patupi]

OK, quick question.

I know someone made a simple fix to get KSPI and TAC Lifesupport (and presumably one of the BioMass mods) to work together by renaming the resources appropriately. I was going to work on it myself, but I'm a little wary of multiple resource definitions. I vaguely remember that those cause trouble. On the other hand if I take one the definitions out... will that mod work properly?

Anyway, a MM file or equivalent file of the existing version to make these work with each other would help. I really don't have the time to wade back through 700 odd pages to find that comment. From memory it was in the 500s, but my memory is terrible

[roxedboxer]

Far more radiators than needed

[roxedboxer]

Do you have enough radiators on your vessel?

Far more radiators than needed..

[NeoAcario]

I think Fractal is trying to make me cry with all of his work and not updating a mod that he does for a hobby for the benefit of us all. That b@stard.

Still love ya, Fractal.

[Rabada]

OK, quick question.

I know someone made a simple fix to get KSPI and TAC Lifesupport (and presumably one of the BioMass mods) to work together by renaming the resources appropriately. I was going to work on it myself, but I'm a little wary of multiple resource definitions. I vaguely remember that those cause trouble. On the other hand if I take one the definitions out... will that mod work properly?

Anyway, a MM file or equivalent file of the existing version to make these work with each other would help. I really don't have the time to wade back through 700 odd pages to find that comment. From memory it was in the 500s, but my memory is terrible

I believe that Interstellar and TAC use different resource names now so they shouldn't have any issues. I'm using TAC and Interstellar with no issues. I don't use any biomass mods though. I'll check the insterstellar files and see if I'm right

EDIT: Interstellar used the resources lqdwater and oxidizer while TAC currently uses the resources water, oxygen, and food, and the various waste forms. I'm not aware of any incompatibilites between the two mods, however I haven't gotten to the advanced parts of this mod yet.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Rabada

[Patupi]

It wasn't exactly incompatibilities of the mods themselves but those resource differences I was looking at. ie getting TAC lifesupport to use water extracted from ice via KSPI systems, or TACLS to use oxygen from the KSPI atmospheric intakes etc. What I remember was something to do with the Open Resource definitions clashing if something else had the same name in another mod. Maybe I'm misremembering it?

(EDIT: To clarify, I mean that if you rename one of the definitions to match KSPI so you can use one mods resource with KSPI then I remembered there was problems.)

Edited March 16, 2014 by Patupi

[Rabada]

It wasn't exactly incompatibilities of the mods themselves but those resource differences I was looking at. ie getting TAC lifesupport to use water extracted from ice via KSPI systems, or TACLS to use oxygen from the KSPI atmospheric intakes etc. What I remember was something to do with the Open Resource definitions clashing if something else had the same name in another mod. Maybe I'm misremembering it?

(EDIT: To clarify, I mean that if you rename one of the definitions to match KSPI so you can use one mods resource with KSPI then I remembered there was problems.)

Sorry, I don't know if anyone has done what you're talking about. If you want to PM me and I can edit the TAC converters to, for example, convert lqdwater (Insterstellar's water resource) to water (TAC's water resource).

[Krevsin]

I have a question.

I'm trying to modify the heat radiators from the Near Future pack by Nertea to work with Interstellar and am struggling with the code. Can anyone help?

[merendel]

1: How much science will it take to complete the Insterstellar tech tree?

2: I noticed that Scott Manley installed Infernal Robotics in order to position his microwave receiver dish for some of his space craft. Is there an easier way to point your dishes without using additional mods?

3: And finally for now, does anyone have any tips or suggestions for my first career mode playthrough with Insterstellar? Right now I am doing science on the Mun, and I am about to start unlocking the interstellar advanced techs for the first time.

1 if you compleatly farm out the mun and minmus you should be able to compleat the whole tree or be only a node or two short. I generaly dont scrape the last little bit from every biome and end up haveing a few missions out to the easier to hit targets to finish out the tree. Make sure you do the impactor science.

2. Not really. If you dont mind your craft looking silly just stud your craft with the recievers pointing in different directions. If you have one pointed down each axis from your craft (forward back left right up and down) you should always be able to recieve some power. At your worst angle (45% between 2 recievers) you should still pick up about 60-70% of the max potential. Personaly I tend to go with 3, forward and backward along my line of thrust and 1 on the side and just roll the ship so the side one gets reception if the forward/back ones are not geting good signal.

3. For tips I'd say make sure you stick a pile of small, self contained reactor modules in orbit befor you upgrade to fusion power. the modules are basicly just a tiny UF4 reactor/generator and a pair of small radiators with docking ports. You can plug these into craft where you want more power than is pratical with RTG/solar but you want long duration with no maintnence. each one will provide around 8-12MW (depends on generator upgrade or not) max output and can run 8 years at max output or almost 32 at minimum. Perfect for pluging into a small craft/probe for years of mission time. If you've got them in orbit you can just send up the main craft for a rendezvous and have an RCS tug pick one up and plug it into a docking port on the main craft. These are exelent for either ion propulsion if you bother or for a kethane miner/refinery as just 1 will power as many drills/converters as you can reasonably put on a craft.

Second suggestion is if you decide to start playing with beamed power its alot easier to make a ground based system than it is to launch reactors into orbit. Orbital sats are going to be 40ton payloads for each reactor and with unupgraded tech you'll probably only get .7-.8 GW out of each one. Thats going to take a ton of launches if you want a 50GW or so net so you can get huge amounts of thrust from beamed power. It gets worse when you consider the need to refuel all those power sats every couple years. On the other hand its rather easy to deploy a cluster of 30 or so reactors that just sit there on the end of the runway beaming power into space. When they run outa fuel just recover and redeploy. you can even set the whole cluster on wheels and drive it away from the KSC to avoid lag. You do suffer a penalty due to beaming through the atmosphere but the system is easy to expand to counter that.

Edited March 16, 2014 by merendel

[WaveFunctionP]

I have a question.

I'm trying to modify the heat radiators from the Near Future pack by Nertea to work with Interstellar and am struggling with the code. Can anyone help?

Give me a minute. I have to tweak each NPF part individually.

[WaveFunctionP]

EDIT: THIS DOES NOT WORK AS IS. You must add "isDeployable = false" to each module entry. This will make it work, but the radiators will work whether they are deployed or not.

Only very, very roughly balanced. Better in some ways than the kspi radiators, but I didn't follow kspi power curve, so it is muted somewhat. I don't know how big those raditators are compared to kspi radiators, so I have no idea if the values make sense. It certainly doesn't follow the watts scaling listed for the NFP radiators, which it doesn't even seem to follow, really.

Hopefully it works without issue. I can't guarantee that it will, or that I will be able to make it work if this doesn't do it.

Download the Module Manager .cfg file here.

// Adds KSPI radiator functionality to NFP Radiators

// Only very roughly balanced.

@PART[radiator-10kW]

{

MODULE

{

name = FNRadiator

radiatorTemp = 1350

radiatorArea = 100

originalName = Mo Li Heat Pipe

upgradeCost = 15

upgradedName = Graphene Radiator

upgradedRadiatorTemp = 3500

upgradeTechReq = experimentalElectrics

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteHeat

amount = 0

maxAmount = 625000

}

}

@PART[radiator-50kW]

{

MODULE

{

name = FNRadiator

radiatorTemp = 1350

radiatorArea = 400

originalName = Mo Li Heat Pipe

upgradeCost = 10

upgradedName = Graphene Radiator

upgradedRadiatorTemp = 3500

upgradeTechReq = experimentalElectrics

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteHeat

amount = 0

maxAmount = 2500000

}

}

@PART[radiator-100kW]

{

MODULE

{

name = FNRadiator

radiatorTemp = 1350

radiatorArea = 1600

originalName = Mo Li Heat Pipe

upgradeCost = 15

upgradedName = Graphene Radiator

upgradedRadiatorTemp = 3500

upgradeTechReq = experimentalElectrics

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteHeat

amount = 0

maxAmount = 10000000

}

}

@PART[radiator-1mw]

{

MODULE

{

name = FNRadiator

radiatorTemp = 1350

radiatorArea = 2400

originalName = Mo Li Heat Pipe

upgradeCost = 15

upgradedName = Graphene Radiator

upgradedRadiatorTemp = 3500

upgradeTechReq = experimentalElectrics

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteHeat

amount = 0

maxAmount = 15000000

}

}

@PART[radiator-2mw]

{

MODULE

{

name = FNRadiator

radiatorTemp = 1350

radiatorArea = 3200

originalName = Mo Li Heat Pipe

upgradeCost = 15

upgradedName = Graphene Radiator

upgradedRadiatorTemp = 3500

upgradeTechReq = experimentalElectrics

}

RESOURCE

{

name = WasteHeat

amount = 0

maxAmount = 20000000

}

}

Edited March 19, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[Krevsin]

Only very, very roughly balanced. Better in some ways than the kspi radiators, but I didn't follow kspi power curve, so it is muted somewhat. I don't know how big those raditators are compared to kspi radiators, so I have no idea if the values make sense. It certainly doesn't follow the watts scaling listed for the NFP radiators, which it doesn't even seem to follow, really.

Hopefully it works without issue. I can't guarantee that it will, or that I will be able to make it work if this doesn't do it.

Download the Module Manager .cfg file here.

Hm, it doesn't seem to radiate heat properly. They deploy and then they just sit there, not doing anything.

In the VAB, the heat helper window is showing that they should work, but in flight they don't radiate any heat. When I right click them, there is no information about what type they are or how much heat they radiate/convect.

I did some fiddling with the .cfg files of the parts and nothing seems to work.

[Donziboy2]

Yea I already have that and reduced texture packs for everything that has it, but I am almost at the memory limit wall and I can't install any other big mods in all their glory. If I uninstall any of them I lose half my crafts.

Oh well, I'll just wait and hope one day KSPI gets a texture pack too (or squad itself solves the problem).

Change texture quality from full to half, I go from 2.9GB to 2GB on startup doing that. And Im using aggressive ATM

[Boamere]

Change texture quality from full to half, I go from 2.9GB to 2GB on startup doing that. And Im using aggressive ATM

Yeah doing this changes me from around 3.4GB to 2.9 and I'm using the basic Texture compressor and I have 88 mods!

[WaveFunctionP]

Hm, it doesn't seem to radiate heat properly. They deploy and then they just sit there, not doing anything.

In the VAB, the heat helper window is showing that they should work, but in flight they don't radiate any heat. When I right click them, there is no information about what type they are or how much heat they radiate/convect.

I did some fiddling with the .cfg files of the parts and nothing seems to work.

The module that defines the radiators appears to reverence the animation for the module to determine if it is deployed, and indeed if it is even present on the vessel. I'm afraid that I don't believe anything can be done without rewriting the code for the module. Possibly by redefining radiator potential dissipation as a resource to make it more compatible as a module for other parts. I'm not entirely sure, my programming is weak at best.

[WaveFunctionP]

I think I'm an idiot.

Try adding:

isDeployable = false

To each MODULE in that .cfg.

If it works, it's a hack at best. The radiators should work as KSPI radiators, whether they are deployed or not. Let me know if it works, I'll update the .cfg upload.

Edited March 16, 2014 by WaveFunctionP