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

[mijki]

Hi guys!

Can somebody write to me step-by-step how do build up the engines(with the name of the parts)? Maybe with some pictures.

Thank you very much.

[chlue]

I run out of battery power at about 3% transmitted, and recharging the battery doesn't seem to continue the upload, is the science lost?

Hm I wonder if some mods screw this up. If batteries are drained for me the game gets in a 'best effort' mode sending a new packet once a certain amount of charged is restored and goes on until the whole transfer is finished.

There are some things to consider trough:

- The base game is a bit buggy. Rail-Timewarping increases the battery charging but does not affect transmission speed, so one can transmit with 5x or 10x timewarp active to avoid to run out of battery

- To actually transmit faster physics warp is needed (the one that only goes up to 4)

- This mod looses the science if the vessel is switched during transfer and due to the fact that the impactors usually don't survive (Makes me wonder if one can build a reuseable one out of plane parts ) you should ensure that you don't dare to switch the vessel once transmission has been started

- KSPInterstellar stores data of the seismic experiments in the WarpPlugin.cfg of the save folder which unfortunate does not have a backup when using quickload, so quickloading will let the mod think the experiment is finished, but the quickload of quicksave.sfs will reset the science!

--> To manually fix this you can delete the lost impact event blocks from the WarpPlugin.cfg file and repeat the experiment

[merendel]

Well.. time redesign my impact science ship... I was going to do 6 impactors and 1 sensor.. guess I'll change it to 6 sensors and 4 impactors to be on the safe side.

For my impactor ship what i did is design 2 probes. the sensor probe is a probe core with a battery, the sensor, an antina a couple 1x6 solars a trio of the tiny landing legs siting on top of a pair of toroidal tanks and a 48-7S engien. Gets about 1.4k dV which is plenty to land on most of the smaller bodies and even do a significant plane change if needed for most locations. The impactors themselves are little more than a probe body a toroidal tank and an ant engine(LV-1). I just attached a set of each probe type onto docking ports with 6 symetry around a 2.5 tank with an LV-N attached to the back and a probe core and RTG on top.

A launch stage to get it into orbit, the LV-N can get it almost anywhere, and I've got 6 sensors and 7 impactors avalible(the drive section can be the final one) The only issue so far is that theres no way to really power the transmission of the first two impacts short of either a ton of solar pannles or just straping a kiwi generator to one of the sensor drones. you can cheese the power somewhat by timewarping as timewarp modifies power income but not transmission rate. Kinda why I was wondering if 4+1 sensors would be enough. I was figuring just send 4 sensors to land equidistant around the equator, a maned lander with a spare sensor and the transmission equipment and just a crap ton of impact probes. Not haveing to plane change to get the polar landings or having to wait for a polar orbit to translate around enough would be kinda nice.

[NeoAcario]

For my impactor ship what i did is design 2 probes. the sensor probe is a probe core with a battery, the sensor, an antina a couple 1x6 solars a trio of the tiny landing legs siting on top of a pair of toroidal tanks and a 48-7S engien. Gets about 1.4k dV which is plenty to land on most of the smaller bodies and even do a significant plane change if needed for most locations. The impactors themselves are little more than a probe body a toroidal tank and an ant engine(LV-1). I just attached a set of each probe type onto docking ports with 6 symetry around a 2.5 tank with an LV-N attached to the back and a probe core and RTG on top.

4 with 1,000 dV for equatorial, 2 with about 3,200 dV to go polar, 3 impactors with about 800 dV and yes, the transfer stage will be the last impactor. About 90 parts+ launch. 126 total. Easy peasy.

Problem is I skipped on Battiers and Solar panels and just used RTGs on all the sensor probes (kept parts down and only very slightly more weight). I think I'll make one of them the transmitter and put on a large enough battery to send it all in one go.

~Steve

[mdapol]

My first attempt at an impact event on Minmus.

4 landers very roughly at 90 degrees around a highly inclined orbit, and single impactor.

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

875 Science ... thats more than most whole missions I do... and its totally overloaded the landers communicatron-16s ability to transmit it all home ...

I run out of battery power at about 3% transmitted, and recharging the battery doesnt seem to continue the upload, is the science lost?

Yeah, it seems to me that the Impactor science is way overpowered. I know the Interstellar nodes require a lot, but we were able to get it before the Impactor experiment so I'm sure it can be turned down. Besides, how exactly is crashing rockets into planets teaching the Kerbals about high-energy particle physics? I'm just sayin'

[Lightwarrior]

...

Problem is I skipped on Battiers and Solar panels and just used RTGs on all the sensor probes (kept parts down and only very slightly more weight). I think I'll make one of them the transmitter and put on a large enough battery to send it all in one go.

~Steve

IMO it is better to add 0.625 reactor to one of the probes, Communotron 16 require 5EC/mit, there seem to be 10mit/1science, so to transmit 1000 science you will need 50000EC. Way too much to store in batteries or generate by RTG. And you will probably get more than 1000 science.

[NeoAcario]

IMO it is better to add 0.625 reactor to one of the probes, Communotron 16 require 5EC/mit, there seem to be 10mit/1science, so to transmit 1000 science you will need 50000EC. Way too much to store in batteries or generate by RTG. And you will probably get more than 1000 science.

Good call on the tiny reactor...

Ok... so what am I missing. First dirt dart landed in the middle of no where... and no science. Second one I intentionally landed by one of the sensors. Only got 35. Am I missing something? I have an actively recording seismic probe at each pole and 90 degress off each on the equator.

35 seems like a pittance looking at the max I should be able to get for this experiment total.

Little help? I'll try saving my fuel for the next one and going full speed at the last second to go over terminal velocity. Maybe that helps.

~Steve

EDIT:

Third into the ocean to test.. it worked.

Fourth at double terminal into a mountain... same small, diminishing return, amount of science.

Edited February 10, 2014 by NeoAcario

[forsaken1111]

I like how we've gone from "Oh noes we lost all the few thousand science possible from the accelerometer" to "omg impact science OP"

[Frostiken]

Is there any lowres pack for this? Interstellar is becoming quite the bloated package these days. Even with the texture compressor mod it doesn't achieve results quite as similar as to what can be obtained with a low-res pack + that mod.

[mdapol]

I like how we've gone from "Oh noes we lost all the few thousand science possible from the accelerometer" to "omg impact science OP"

I like how we've now seen the return of the 6000 science-from-one-mission Manley mode. You basically don't have to do any other science experiments at all now.

[xfrankie]

I like how we've now seen the return of the 6000 science-from-one-mission Manley mode. You basically don't have to do any other science experiments at all now.

you don't have to use impactors to get those amounts... I used only stock science + Magnetometer, on my last trip to Jool (scouting its moons except Laythe, using Vista engine) a while ago and it got me this:

[Shania_L]

I wasn't complaining at all, certainly not at the amount of science awarded.

The complexity of mission required to have 5 different components, 4 of them landers, is deserving of impressive reward. The 875 I got for Minmus I think was hard earned (at least for me). It took me by surprise how difficult transmitting that much data was going to be, so I may yet lose it all.

(I reset the transmitted = True in the WarpPlugin to False, so the data is safe in my probe again, I just need to work out how to collect it )

[mdapol]

I wasn't complaining at all, certainly not at the amount of science awarded.

The complexity of mission required to have 5 different components, 4 of them landers, is deserving of impressive reward. The 875 I got for Minmus I think was hard earned (at least for me). It took me by surprise how difficult transmitting that much data was going to be, so I may yet lose it all.

(I reset the transmitted = True in the WarpPlugin to False, so the data is safe in my probe again, I just need to work out how to collect it )

I guess I don't believe that the science amount should be based on how difficult or complicated the mission is. Certainly not if you're after "realism" which the rest of this mod purports to be.

I guess I'm looking for a slower development path than most.

[forsaken1111]

I guess I don't believe that the science amount should be based on how difficult or complicated the mission is. Certainly not if you're after "realism" which the rest of this mod purports to be.

I guess I'm looking for a slower development path than most.

Sounds like your problem is with the stock science system then, not with this mod.

[mdapol]

Sounds like your problem is with the stock science system then, not with this mod.

If you look at the picture he posted, all the stock science values are pretty reasonable. What is not shown is how much science was received by the Magnetometer, which is -not- stock. In fact it's from this very add-on.

Besides, I haven't had a problem getting too much science using the stock instruments.

[Fractal_UK]

I guess I don't believe that the science amount should be based on how difficult or complicated the mission is. Certainly not if you're after "realism" which the rest of this mod purports to be.

That is a very bizarre piece of logic. In general, in research, scientific gains are very much commensurate with the amount of effort you put into making your experiment or your theoretical model realistic. You might be able to draw some worthwhile conclusions with a poor experimental setupid or a simple model but nowhere near as many as if you actually put the effort into making a good one.

This system does need a bit of tweaking of values for sure, particularly for the more distant planets but it's not really so far out of line with what you can already get and takes quite a lot more work.

I guess I'm looking for a slower development path than most.

I sympathise with that, in KSP the two things that I think would make a really nice "difficulty slider" are 1) physical scale relative to reality and 2) tech costs.

[forsaken1111]

If you look at the picture he posted, all the stock science values are pretty reasonable. What is not shown is how much science was received by the Magnetometer, which is -not- stock. In fact it's from this very add-on.

Besides, I haven't had a problem getting too much science using the stock instruments.

And NOT pictured are the values from the magnetometer. But he said that science is all from stock and the magnetometer. You're assuming an unbalanced portion is coming from the magnetometer when in fact we have no idea from that picture how much did.

My point was that the stock system is set up with escalating science rewards depending on the distance/difficulty of a body to reach. This mod follows the same pattern. If you dislike that setup, your problem is with the way the stock system works.

[NeoAcario]

So is Impact science on Kerbin broken? I'm getting less than 1 science per impact now (after about a dozen) and I'm still under 50% of the total achieved... according to the experiments tab in the R&D building.

I'm so very confused.

~Steve

EDIT:

I've gotten just under 115 total science from impacts on Kerbin, but the bar still shows only ~45% full.

Edited February 10, 2014 by NeoAcario

[mdapol]

That is a very bizarre piece of logic. In general, in research, scientific gains are very much commensurate with the amount of effort you put into making your experiment or your theoretical model realistic. You might be able to draw some worthwhile conclusions with a poor experimental setupid or a simple model but nowhere near as many as if you actually put the effort into making a good one.

This system does need a bit of tweaking of values for sure, particularly for the more distant planets but it's not really so far out of line with what you can already get and takes quite a lot more work.

I sympathise with that, in KSP the two things that I think would make a really nice "difficulty slider" are 1) physical scale relative to reality and 2) tech costs.

It will be nice when they add in a "money" system so you have to actually have the funds to buy the tech after you unlock the node. That should slow things down nicely.

[Lightwarrior]

Actually it is stock game that is still unbalanced. If you will play full stock you can unlock whole science tree without ever leaving kerbin system. And more, you can get those ~10k of science from mun in single mission. Or even easier - from minmus.

I actually got to nuclear propulsion node just from mun and minmus with those 4x prices and only stock instruments.

After this it really does not matter are impactors OP or not, are labs OP or not, the whole system is unbalanced right now. Probably future stock updates will change this.

And right now impactors are fun. Not because of science but because they are just diffrerent from stock science system and created new problems to solve.

[xfrankie]

And NOT pictured are the values from the magnetometer. But he said that science is all from stock and the magnetometer. You're assuming an unbalanced portion is coming from the magnetometer when in fact we have no idea from that picture how much did.

-snip

Well I originally didn't think I would post that pic anywhere, I took it only because I never got so much in one run, so I was quite surprised.

Also the Magnetometer isn't that overpowered, sure you get about 100-200 from each reading but you also can't use while landed/in atmosphere etc.

Aaand it might have as well been a bit higher final number, because I forgot to put antenna on the ship, so only one crew report instead of ~14

[mdapol]

I guess we can all agree that -all- the science values need re-balancing.

[merendel]

Aaand it might have as well been a bit higher final number, because I forgot to put antenna on the ship, so only one crew report instead of ~14

you can get around that. If you EVA have your kerbal take the science from the pod and then store it back you can take another crew report. useing that method you can take as many reports as you want long as each is from a different biome state(aka flying high over/low over/landed)

[Rizendell]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Which power supply/demand?

Transmitters transmitting 100% of the theoretical power, even when there is no or little demand.

And receivers getting 100% of the theoretical supply even if the craft they are on is only demanding a small portion of that.

Obviously there is no point in having nuclear reactors with variable output if they are too dumb to vary it based on demand outside of its own craft.

[Spyre2000]

I recently upgraded from 9.2 to 10.3 version of MOD in case that has any baring on the following issues. The method I used for upgrade was to delete the old mod files and copy in the new ones.

1) How do you upgrade parts?

The wiki is extremely vague on this and the only part I've found that had upgrade button was Computer Core. I created a testing save and gave my self 100K science to unlock all the tech. But the parts are still stuck at their unupgraded stats. Also the Computer core only seems to be PER core unlike that the wiki says regarding upgrade 1 part and all new ones with be upgraded. Turns out making simply rover with computer core, upgrading it, then recovering vessel followed by launching a new rover doesn't get me the upgraded core. I have to pay the science again.

2) I can't seem to find the New Impactor Science Item mentioned on the main page which was supposedly added in v10. I got the Telescope up and running but no luck on the Impactor. Where is it on the Tech Tree and which Tab should it be under in VAB?