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

[Fractal_UK]

Is there anything in this mod that would affect the solar panel power curves? I took a look and couldn't see anything obvious.

I use RSS, and all of a sudden I get no power from Squad's panels when out around Jool.

Please don't take this as blame, I'm just trying to narrow it down. I absolutely love this mod, and just downloaded it for the first time this week. So thank you.

Yes - it's rather sneakily modified in FNSolarPanelWasteHeatModule. The idea is to make the solar panels have more proper inverse square dependence - power at Kerbin stays the same but outer system power is much lower and inner system power much higher.

Also, glad to hear you're enjoying it!

[RadHazard]

Yeah, all the solar panels except the OX-STAT have had their solar curve tweaked.

[Sternface]

Thanks for the quick response.

I can't seem to find the module, although I see it referenced in the part .cfgs. Is there any way to disable it, as RSS also implements an inverse square modifier? Or would that break functionality?

Starwaster proposed this modulemanager1.5 tweak:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleDeployableSolarPanel]:HAS[#resourceName[ElectricCharge]]]
{
	@MODULE[ModuleDeployableSolarPanel]
	{
		!powerCurve{}
		powerCurve
		{
			key = 0E0 223.8 0 0//0 -0.5
			key = 5.79091E10 6.6736  0 0//-0.5 -0.5
			key = 1.08208E11 1.9113  0 0//-0.5 -0.5
			key = 1.49598261E11 1.0  0 0//-0.1 -0.1
			key = 2.279391E11 0.431  0 0//-.03 -.03
			key = 7.785472E11 0.037  0 0//-.01 -.001
			key = 5.874E12 0 0 0//-0.001 0
		}
	}
}

Any reason why the power curves aren't being deleted and replaced on startup, as per the operator?

Btw, I'm kinda a nuke geek myself, so I really appreciate all the thought you put into your work, not to mention the function.

[Fractal_UK]

Thanks for the quick response.

I can't seem to find the module, although I see it referenced in the part .cfgs. Is there any way to disable it, as RSS also implements an inverse square modifier? Or would that break functionality?

Starwaster proposed this modulemanager1.5 tweak:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleDeployableSolarPanel]:HAS[#resourceName[ElectricCharge]]]
{
	@MODULE[ModuleDeployableSolarPanel]
	{
		!powerCurve{}
		powerCurve
		{
			key = 0E0 223.8 0 0//0 -0.5
			key = 5.79091E10 6.6736  0 0//-0.5 -0.5
			key = 1.08208E11 1.9113  0 0//-0.5 -0.5
			key = 1.49598261E11 1.0  0 0//-0.1 -0.1
			key = 2.279391E11 0.431  0 0//-.03 -.03
			key = 7.785472E11 0.037  0 0//-.01 -.001
			key = 5.874E12 0 0 0//-0.001 0
		}
	}
}

Any reason why the power curves aren't being deleted and replaced on startup, as per the operator?

Btw, I'm kinda a nuke geek myself, so I really appreciate all the thought you put into your work, not to mention the function.

My code executes later than ModuleManager so the values are briefly read into the game but are superceeded when the solar panel is actually loaded by a vessel. It's currently not possible to fix without deleting the WasteHeat function for solar panels (which you can do by deleting everything in the GameData/WarpPlugin/Additions folder).

That's a very temporary solution though because I'm changing the way that system works in 0.8 - so in 0.8, instead of hard-coding Kerbin's orbital radius, I'll have it check Kerbin's actual distance from the sun. That should make the values scale correctly for players who use both RSS and the stock solar system.

Also, the nuclear reactors and nuclear resource system is getting a big upgrade in 0.8, so you'll probably enjoy all that - it makes the system a bit more consistent and improves the simulation of nuclear reactor performance and the nuclear fuel life-cycle.

[KhaosCorp]

Will your 0.8 release be craft breaking? Just started a new save (with rss), if its gonna break craft I'll just wait to start my actual game and just do test flights till 0.8 drops.

[Fractal_UK]

Will your 0.8 release be craft breaking? Just started a new save (with rss), if its gonna break craft I'll just wait to start my actual game and just do test flights till 0.8 drops.

Nope, not in general. You might need to perform some minor aesthetic alterations to craft with nuclear reactors but functionally everything should carry on working - additionally any nuclear reactors you have in space at the moment will be automatically topped up with fuel as if they'd just been launched, this is to avoid breaking issues.

[NathanKell]

Fractal_UK, I heartily approve the going to planet orbital radius, for obvious reasons.

I've been bashing my head against the problem for a while, since I didn't realize KSPI was also changing things.

...Although...could you load the radius from a config file? It'd be nice to just set a value "distance from sun at which multiplier is 1.0 in power curve" and forget about it, especially since at some point I'd like to change Kerbin's body.name to Earth, which may well mess up how you're getting its orbital altitude.

Really looking forward to the nuclear overhaul too!

[Fractal_UK]

Fractal_UK, I heartily approve the going to planet orbital radius, for obvious reasons.

I've been bashing my head against the problem for a while, since I didn't realize KSPI was also changing things.

...Although...could you load the radius from a config file? It'd be nice to just set a value "distance from sun at which multiplier is 1.0 in power curve" and forget about it, especially since at some point I'd like to change Kerbin's body.name to Earth, which may well mess up how you're getting its orbital altitude.

Really looking forward to the nuclear overhaul too!

Yes, loading it from a ConfigFile is an option. That said, I tend to refer to the planets in my code by their flight globals index, which I think is hardcoded? In which case, it wouldn't be a problem. (The only exception is in the resource map code, which is actually quite handy - I could see the use for having different maps for Kerbin and Earth, especially if you alter the terrain in future).

You know, it's really frustrating the devs didn't make FloatCurve.evaluate() a virtual method, if they had, we could have proper inverse square rather than the very approximated behaviour we have at the moment.

[NathanKell]

That and a number of other functions too.

Although localSol is working on using tangents to get the curve to match for me, so you should get nearly inverse-square evaluations (hey, it uses cubic beziers, you darn well better be able to replicate a parabola!)

Re: body order. Yeah, I think that might break other things if I changed Earth to not-body-1.

[Sigma]

Quick question: Will there be any kind of Uranium storage canister?

[Sternface]

(which you can do by deleting everything in the GameData/WarpPlugin/Additions folder).

Eh, I'd rather live with it than uninstall your mod. The AIES panels work fine, so no big deal. I appreciate the explanation.

Looking forward to the new release.

[Thourion]

Eh, I'd rather live with it than uninstall your mod. The AIES panels work fine, so no big deal. I appreciate the explanation.

Looking forward to the new release.

Actually if you do what he sais, you only remove the modifications for the stock solar panels, you dont uninstall the mod

[Sternface]

Actually if you do what he sais, you only remove the modifications for the stock solar panels, you dont uninstall the mod

Word, thanks. I'll check it out tomorrow. I forgot it would only affect those.

[Fractal_UK]

Quick question: Will there be any kind of Uranium storage canister?

Yes, there will be cannisters for both Uranium and Thorium - I've decided that these will be half full in the VAB. Making them completely full is problematic because it prevents you from switching between Uranium and Thorium - since the reactor starts fueled up with Uranium and you need somewhere to put it when you swap the fuel types, otherwise it won't let you swap.

Reprocessing will also be improved but you will need some storage tanks with your reprocessing facilities to store the depleted fuels they produce.

[Entelin]

I'm having some trouble.. I made a ship with the largest antimater reactor, the largest power generator, antimatter tank, fusion engines, warp drive. It works fine for awhile, I took off from earth flew to jool, the power usage is stable the whole time. Until the generator seems to just stop working for no apparent reason. Here is my ship:

Megajoules and electric charge just stop recharging. I've tried disabling everything on the ship and it makes no difference. If I undock the top section, it starts working again, dock it, it stops. I tried disabling crossfeed which also made no difference. This is an engine section which is going to be attached to a large ship already in space. Anyone have any ideas? I am running the newest version of interstellar mod.

[Fractal_UK]

Megajoules and electric charge just stop recharging. I've tried disabling everything on the ship and it makes no difference. If I undock the top section, it starts working again, dock it, it stops. I tried disabling crossfeed which also made no difference. This is an engine section which is going to be attached to a large ship already in space. Anyone have any ideas? I am running the newest version of interstellar mod.

Can you try building one on the launch pad just the same and seeing if it works there?

I've seen problems like this mentioned a few times but I have so far been unable to replicate it, which means either I'm doing something wrong or there may be another mod that is interfering with normal operations, do you have any other mods installed, and if so, which ones?

Did it stop working when you docked the top section or did it work for a while with that attached? Also, just to check the obvious things, you still have plenty of antimatter, right?

[Entelin]

Can you try building one on the launch pad just the same and seeing if it works there?

It was built and launched from kerbal. I flew it to jool (because thats where the other half of the ship is), here is the craft file: http://focusedsupport.it/stuff/Engine%20cluster%20mkII.7z

There is plenty of antimatter and other resources, the top section was there at launch. It works just fine for awhile, but I think right after I arrive at jool it no longer recharges, I've tried launching this 3 times. As I mentioned above, oddly, when I undock that top section and switch back over to the main body I can right click on the reactor and see that it has recharged megajoules and electricity, and the antimatter tank is again charging.

The only mods I have installed are KAS, Mechjeb, and EnhancedNavBall. I can try removing mechjeb and kas quick and see if it fixes it...

Edited November 19, 2013 by Entelin

[s20dan]

Do you have a small anti-matter tank hidden in the top section? If so, lock it up.

[DaMichel]

Hi there. First post in this forum. I've been playing this game for some time now and been enjoying it a lot with all the great mods.

I'm wondering about how heat balance works in this mod.

I started a career with RemoteTech and some other mods (Manley inspired ). So in order to maintain control, the electronics equipment of my probes has to run 24/7. I had this one probe, powered only with some solar panels and it was disabled by waste heat half way to Duna. I know there are ways to fix it but is this realistic? So ...

Wikipedia says the solar radiation around earth is 1400 W/m^2. Lets see how hot our ship might get if it was a black body radiator. I also assume that it has twice as much emitting area as receiving area. So using Stefan-Boltzmann's law, i obtain around 334 K. Then it should be in equilibrium and emit as much as it receives. I guess this is quite overestimated, since a real craft would reflect some light and whatnot.

Hence i guess the heat loss without radiators could be increased a little. Real space probes don't have big radiators either.

How is heat balance modeled actually? I had a look at the plugin sources and i couldn't completely understand it. What i expected to see was like three compartments which are in thermal contact: reactor core, radiator and the rest. Each with its own temperature and heat fluxes in between. It looks however like the temperature of the craft is some fixed value, right? (FNResourceManager, l. 275)

Okay i'm just nit-picking i suppose ... Thanks for making this mod!

[Thourion]

Well i got a question that is probably asked a million times. Is it worth it to make an antimatter factory with Labs, powered by an AM reactor, on KSP grass ?

With that first question of course, i mean if it is more profitable (AM gain wise+Game hussle), instead of just using a normal 900m orbit with the hassle of using a tag from there and back and forth to park orbit, to fill up your IP crafts needs.

Second question is, my idea of using an AM reactor instead of a nuke, just for smaller needed structure, but here i cant make it happen.

First of all i dont know if the quantity of AM tanks play any part in the resource making/gathering. Does it flow like fuel? or like RCS ?

The other thing is i cant produce any with the ground lab. (Orbit collection is fine)

I made a craft that only has a little nuke, just to produce enough for wheels and stuff. Ive put a 3.5 gen, and a 3.5 AM reactor. 5 labs in total.

Then i made a craft, with 2 big nukes plus generators of their own and stuff radiators etc.

I connect them together, and we get the 5GW needed (i only activate 1 of the labs), the AM resource shows -0.00, so technically its rising. At some point the AM reactor kicks in, we start to see the increase in power.

So here is the kicker, because im bored to wait RL and see whats gonna happen, i start timewarp, the AM meter is rising and rising, if you increase warp then we get the effect of no energy production (at some point everything is gonna run out), but also if you stop timewarp the AM goes back to -0.00 (from 0.38 something), and the AM reactor stops the juice, so i cant activate the rest of the labs.

To much wall of text.. well im sure im making a stupid design flaw somewhere (like why on earth i use an AM reactor instead of some nukes in the first place, since its Kerbin ground and can easelly move stuff around), or why i dont go to Jool and get tons of the stuff.. but anyway.

Instead of answers (which would be just as nice), if anyone got a craft of AM production on the ground, id be happy to have a look at it. Not because there arent any better ideas out there, but mostly to cure my curiosity of "What's the matter Antimatter?"

[BrickedKeyboard]

Hi there. First post in this forum. I've been playing this game for some time now and been enjoying it a lot with all the great mods.

I'm wondering about how heat balance works in this mod.

I started a career with RemoteTech and some other mods (Manley inspired ). So in order to maintain control, the electronics equipment of my probes has to run 24/7. I had this one probe, powered only with some solar panels and it was disabled by waste heat half way to Duna. I know there are ways to fix it but is this realistic? So ...

Wikipedia says the solar radiation around earth is 1400 W/m^2. Lets see how hot our ship might get if it was a black body radiator. I also assume that it has twice as much emitting area as receiving area. So using Stefan-Boltzmann's law, i obtain around 334 K. Then it should be in equilibrium and emit as much as it receives. I guess this is quite overestimated, since a real craft would reflect some light and whatnot.

Hence i guess the heat loss without radiators could be increased a little. Real space probes don't have big radiators either.

How is heat balance modeled actually? I had a look at the plugin sources and i couldn't completely understand it. What i expected to see was like three compartments which are in thermal contact: reactor core, radiator and the rest. Each with its own temperature and heat fluxes in between. It looks however like the temperature of the craft is some fixed value, right? (FNResourceManager, l. 275)

Okay i'm just nit-picking i suppose ... Thanks for making this mod!

I agree 100%. Also, the way waste heat affects spacecraft systems is also quite wrong. Fractal should use modulemanager to add the waste heat stat to the game's pods, engines, and scientific instruments. If waste heat is too high, it should disable them. Furthermore, the waste heat storage number should be much much smaller. It should be about 100->1000 times smaller. If you are making waste heat faster than you are dissipating it, spacecraft should overheat and shut down within hours, not days or weeks.

Finally, waste heat should not be generated if power is being produced by solar panels and is not being used by the spacecraft. (for nuclear reactors that are at idle, this is understandable). Solar panels that are not producing power do not produce waste heat in real life physics. (I mean, they do heat up, but you are basically just holding the circuit open, and there's no load that they are driving)

[forsaken1111]

Well i got a question that is probably asked a million times. Is it worth it to make an antimatter factory with Labs, powered by an AM reactor, on KSP grass ?

85% certain I recall Fractal saying that AM production in a lab is lossy, as in you make less AM than it would take to produce it.

This is easy to check though. Use TAC fuel balancer to fill an AM tank (or just mod one to be full) before 'launching' your test rig and then run the lab and see if the total goes up or down.

[Entelin]

85% certain I recall Fractal saying that AM production in a lab is lossy, as in you make less AM than it would take to produce it.

This is easy to check though. Use TAC fuel balancer to fill an AM tank (or just mod one to be full) before 'launching' your test rig and then run the lab and see if the total goes up or down.

You can produce AM on the ground just fine, just don't use an AM reactor. Use the largest nuclear reactor and power gen, a little more than one per lab. Normally I will surround my ship with 8 labs/power, collect the AM before launch, seperate and recover them, then launch. You will never have a net gain using an AM reactor, it will always cost. It's a good idea to bring along a small nuclear reactor as well to at least keep your AM tanks powered in the event you run out, or encounter a bug like I did above.

[Entelin]

Do you have a small anti-matter tank hidden in the top section? If so, lock it up.

I do not have any other tank. I also removed all the KAS and Mechjeb parts and had the same issue.

[forsaken1111]

You can produce AM on the ground just fine, just don't use an AM reactor. Use the largest nuclear reactor and power gen, a little more than one per lab. Normally I will surround my ship with 8 labs/power, collect the AM before launch, seperate and recover them, then launch. You will never have a net gain using an AM reactor, it will always cost. It's a good idea to bring along a small nuclear reactor as well to at least keep your AM tanks powered in the event you run out, or encounter a bug like I did above.

Yes I know... I never said you couldn't.

What I said was that you cannot use the AM you produce in an AM reactor to produce MORE AM. That is what Thourion was trying. Did you actually read the posts? Because he talked about using nukes.