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

[theSpeare]

Yeah, I reckon when wasteheat is accumulated to a bad level efficiency of your parts should decrease dramatically - to the point where they simply don't function at all. Then maybe, for the hell of it, once it gets REALLY extreme, just have everything explode.

I do believe though that you should add a configurable option somewhere to just flat-out disable this game feature. I fear it would turn into something such as the life-support system mods that are already around. It becomes more of a chore than an actual gameplay enhancer (more of an annoyance than a challenge).

[Mzxs]

Yeah, I reckon when wasteheat is accumulated to a bad level efficiency of your parts should decrease dramatically - to the point where they simply don't function at all. Then maybe, for the hell of it, once it gets REALLY extreme, just have everything explode.

I do believe though that you should add a configurable option somewhere to just flat-out disable this game feature. I fear it would turn into something such as the life-support system mods that are already around. It becomes more of a chore than an actual gameplay enhancer (more of an annoyance than a challenge).

i like your idea it was what i was thinking

[Hremsfeld]

Version 0.6 Released

Awesome! I've got it fired up. Glaring problem I see with my current setup is that my ships don't have radiators...Time to send a radiator module to dock with 'em!

On the note of docking with far-flung ships: I had a Fusion-powered ship effectively get trapped around Moho after warping there due to the Deuterium - which is consumed at a fixed rate regardless of throttle settings but come with one-fifth the Lithium - being nearly empty in the engine. So, I config-edited the Rockomax-16 tank to hold a bunch of each, put it in a docking tug, and sent it out. I ran into a weird issue where my unmanned fusion ship cooked everyone in the manned-and-nearly-derelict fusion ship, despite my radiation safety settings being on, but this was before the update. Having updated, I killed relative velocity 2.1km out and sent the tug out on its own to dock up.

Unfortunately, Deuterium and Lithium, despite having flowMode = ALL_VESSEL, had transfer = NONE in their resource definition. Why is this? I can see why you don't want it for UF-6 and DUF-6, namely because pulling fissile material out of an active reactor is a Bad Idea, but if antimatter, which is notoriously disagreeable to handle, can be pumped around like no one's business than some heavy water and a few slivers of metal being a problem confuses me.

Another thing I noticed: The Fusion engine used to be possible to use continuously with an upgraded 3.5m nuclear reactor. Currently, it's the only thing drawing megajoules on my ship, which features an upgraded 3.5m reactor and generator, and an upgraded 2.5m reactor with two generators. The warp drive isn't charging, the ExoticMatter flow is disabled entirely, and I've no science components on the vessel (the A.I. core isn't upgraded yet). It's draining at a rate of about 7166.66...MJ/min, which is enough for six minutes of burning. Granted, it recharges in about twenty-five seconds, but where'd that capability go? The 3.5m has the coretemp of 27000K, an- Ah. It's active, but only to 60% for some reason. One moment...

Ah. My 3.5m reactor was only at 60% power, and the 2.5m was at 30%. I disabled my other reactor's UF6 and DUF6 flows and shut down the other generators, but that caused my primary reactor to drop to 33.57% (and accordingly losing more MJ/min). I hastily re-enabled everything, but my reactor's still only at 60%. Could it be because of an unusual UF6/DUF6 balance? This was the aforementioned refueling vessel; I changed the Resources.cfg to allow me to move the various things around. I also have maximum Thermal Power and maximum Waste Heat. I put a screenshot here; I'd put it inline, but I'd break tables. This was originally a 6.2-ish km/s burn, but I had to reset the node a few times.

Please note, I'm enjoying the crap out of this mod so far, even though I (rightly) consider my nuclear-engine accomplishments to be a different game than my chemical- and quasi-chemical engine rockets. Thank you for putting in the time to make something like this and deal with annoying fans like me pestering and nagging you about a little detail that can literally be changed in five seconds in Notepad. Big thanks to Zzz, too; these are some gorgeous models! Having only dabbled very briefly in Blender, I'm only the slightest bit familiar with how much work has to go into these, so thank you for doing so.

VVVVV: You...you could've done that SO much faster if you went into a higher orbit...

Edited October 4, 2013 by Hremsfeld

[Ashtoruin]

After a Year+ of manufacturing Antimatter, My first trip to Moho is in order after a short refueling trip.

[Railgunner2160]

So, been working on my first FTL Craft, Introducing the Warp 1 Test Craft!!

Made it to Eve and back, no landing or anything fancy but made it back to kerbin with a fair amount of reserve DV. Unupgraded parts, made it off kerbin on it's own. Antimatter supplied by the KERN Supercollider(Not really, used FuelBalancer to fill the tanks). Flies pretty good to, if a little wobbly at times!!

Only problem I've had with waste heat was that even 4 of the HUGE radiators fail to cool off if I leave the 3.75M reactor running, Though not sure if the 4 tiny 0.66M(?) nuke reactors would offset the large panels cooling abilities. The Warp 1 has completed it's job, now to rescue the brave FTL Crew: Jeb, Bill, & Bob!!!

Edited October 4, 2013 by Railgunner2160

[Ashtoruin]

So, been working on my first FTL Craft, Introducing the Warp 1 Test Craft!!

Made it to Eve and back, no landing or anything fancy but made it back to kerbin with a fair amount of reserve DV. Unupgraded parts, made it off kerbin on it's own. Antimatter supplied by the KERN Supercollider(Not really, used FuelBalancer to fill the tanks). Flies pretty good to, if a little wobbly at times!!

You Faired better than me... I blew up a docking port accelerating too fast... Whoops. Time to limit Mechjeb.

So, you should totally make docking ports that can stand Thermal Rocket Acceleration :3

Edited October 4, 2013 by Ashtoruin

[Railgunner2160]

Try 50ms, worked great on my launch....

Also in case of emergency it uses SDHI's docking port & Parachute combo part in case of failed launches, ofcourse I've never actually tested it, I also failed to incorporate a decoupler for pod...

Edited October 4, 2013 by Railgunner2160

[Ashtoruin]

Have it at 40, the second Mechjeb said Accelerate, I had two Halves of a Rocket.

[Ashtoruin]

Actually it seems to be that my Thermal Rockets are cutting out due to a Lack of Thermal Power after about 10 seconds of being on even though I have full Thermal Power... The Only Engine that didn't shut down is the one that is empty and charging...

Edit, Yeah So I have 6 1.25m Electric Generators with 1.25m Antimatter Reactors below that with 1.25m Thermal Rockets below that. I have 5/6 of the Reactors saying Full Thermal Power (the one that isnt full being the one attached to the working engine) and the last one charging at about 5 Thermal Power per second, All 6 Generators are inactive, and every Antimatter engine says its running at 0% even though Im generating Thermal Power.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Ashtoruin

[Donziboy2]

Its a bug, if you cycle the propellent type they should come to life. I was doing that last night with the jet engines.

[forsaken1111]

Do you have any of the other fuels (Argon, Xenon) available? If you don't have any, it will just swap you straight back to LiquidFuel.

Aha, makes sense. I was pad testing several engines to gather some data on thrust and ISP. (I know you have a chart up but I like to verify and record my own findings from practical tests)

Turns out I had included a monopropellant tank rather than an argon tank. Whoops.

By the way, any thoughts on my suggestions earlier? In particular the ISRU scanner would be very useful so we could send probes to other worlds to scan for usable resources.

I'm also running into a strange issue where rockets will sometimes get to ~10k then explode with a message that 'such and such part collided with obj_base'. I don't know that this is related to your mod, but figured I would mention it. Any thoughts?

I don't see any part called obj_base, so I'm kind of stumped on this.

Edited October 4, 2013 by forsaken1111

[Fractal_UK]

Actually it seems to be that my Thermal Rockets are cutting out due to a Lack of Thermal Power after about 10 seconds of being on even though I have full Thermal Power... The Only Engine that didn't shut down is the one that is empty and charging...

Edit, Yeah So I have 6 1.25m Electric Generators with 1.25m Antimatter Reactors below that with 1.25m Thermal Rockets below that. I have 5/6 of the Reactors saying Full Thermal Power (the one that isnt full being the one attached to the working engine) and the last one charging at about 5 Thermal Power per second, All 6 Generators are inactive, and every Antimatter engine says its running at 0% even though Im generating Thermal Power.

The antimatter reactors reading 0% isn't something to worry about it in itself, they match their supply against demand, so if your ship isn't doing anything to use up power, they won't produce anyway.

I'm not sure why the engine wouldn't be working though, can you post a screenshot or more details of the design of craft that is causing this?

Unfortunately, Deuterium and Lithium, despite having flowMode = ALL_VESSEL, had transfer = NONE in their resource definition. Why is this? I can see why you don't want it for UF-6 and DUF-6, namely because pulling fissile material out of an active reactor is a Bad Idea, but if antimatter, which is notoriously disagreeable to handle, can be pumped around like no one's business than some heavy water and a few slivers of metal being a problem confuses me.

First of all, thanks for the big feedback post.

I have no idea why they both have ended up with transfer = NONE in the resource file. Could be a copy/paste mistake or something, I'll fix that for the next version.

Another thing I noticed: The Fusion engine used to be possible to use continuously with an upgraded 3.5m nuclear reactor. Currently, it's the only thing drawing megajoules on my ship, which features an upgraded 3.5m reactor and generator, and an upgraded 2.5m reactor with two generators.

I ran into a weird issue where my unmanned fusion ship cooked everyone in the manned-and-nearly-derelict fusion ship, despite my radiation safety settings being on, but this was before the update. Having updated, I killed relative velocity 2.1km out and sent the tug out on its own to dock up.

I'll look into these issues and get back to you. I haven't changed anything with the DT Vista engine in this update but sometimes, changing other things that those things rely upon in subtle ways can produce weird effects. I definitely don't want fusion engines cooking people without warning.

It should be possible to run the engine constantly with upgraded 3.75m reactors and generators though, that was the idea.

[Fractal_UK]

By the way, any thoughts on my suggestions earlier? In particular the ISRU scanner would be very useful so we could send probes to other worlds to scan for usable resources.

Something like an ISRU scanner is definitely on the agenda for when I go over the resource system again. I'm afraid I haven't had much chance to look over anything relating to further development yet, so I'll probably come back to this in a few days.

I'm also running into a strange issue where rockets will sometimes get to ~10k then explode with a message that 'such and such part collided with obj_base'. I don't know that this is related to your mod, but figured I would mention it. Any thoughts?

I don't see any part called obj_base, so I'm kind of stumped on this.

Do you have any other mods running? It's definitely not anything to do with this, I don't have any obj_base or add any scenery or anything like that. It could be another mod or it could a rare bug with the stock game - I've heard of examples of people having weird collisions with planes around the KSC runway, never heard any instances during rocket launches though.

[forsaken1111]

I do have a few other mods running but nothing that adds scenery or anything like that. I'll try it again tonight, didn't have a lot of time to test it out yesterday.

[Ashtoruin]

After a Year+ of manufacturing Antimatter, My first trip to Moho is in order after a short refueling trip.

This is the ship in question.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Ashtoruin

[forsaken1111]

Ashtoruin, What mod is that big toroid from?

[Ashtoruin]

Ashtoruin, What mod is that big toroid from?

Just Google spherical tanks ksp, it should be the first thing, I'll post a link after my physics class when I'm not on my phone

[forsaken1111]

Just Google spherical tanks ksp, it should be the first thing, I'll post a link after my physics class when I'm not on my phone

Ah, didn't realize the toroid was included in the spherical tanks mod. i recognized the big tank but not the toroid. I'm familiar with the mod so no need to trouble yourself to link, just didn't realize new parts had been added. Will check it out, thanks!

[Ashtoruin]

Ah, didn't realize the toroid was included in the spherical tanks mod. i recognized the big tank but not the toroid. I'm familiar with the mod so no need to trouble yourself to link, just didn't realize new parts had been added. Will check it out, thanks!

Yeah I saw the toroidal tanks and immediately had to get it... And they're perfect for stabilizing collectors as you can see :3

Edited October 4, 2013 by Ashtoruin

[wasmic]

KERN Supercollider

Sorry, but I have to correct you here. CERN is a scince institute, not a supercollider. The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a supercollider that is located at CERN.

[Ashtoruin]

Sorry, but I have to correct you here. CERN is a scince institute, not a supercollider. The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a supercollider that is located at CERN.

Or maybe he was making a Kerbin/Kerbal joke?

[wasmic]

Or maybe he was making a Kerbin/Kerbal joke?

Of course he was, but I... well, when I see something like that, I just have to correct it. How about LHK? Nah, that sounds like a russin spacecraft.

[Fractal_UK]

Actually it seems to be that my Thermal Rockets are cutting out due to a Lack of Thermal Power after about 10 seconds of being on even though I have full Thermal Power... The Only Engine that didn't shut down is the one that is empty and charging...

Edit, Yeah So I have 6 1.25m Electric Generators with 1.25m Antimatter Reactors below that with 1.25m Thermal Rockets below that. I have 5/6 of the Reactors saying Full Thermal Power (the one that isnt full being the one attached to the working engine) and the last one charging at about 5 Thermal Power per second, All 6 Generators are inactive, and every Antimatter engine says its running at 0% even though Im generating Thermal Power.

What propellant are you using with the engines? I'm having some problems making this happen myself. I've just been experimenting with a cluster of 8 1.25m antimatter reactors + generators + thermal rockets to see if it was related to using large numbers of rockets. Everything is working perfectly for me.

[Ashtoruin]

What propellant are you using with the engines? I'm having some problems making this happen myself. I've just been experimenting with a cluster of 8 1.25m antimatter reactors + generators + thermal rockets to see if it was related to using large numbers of rockets. Everything is working perfectly for me.

Liquid fuel, maybe try with 6 rockets, also it only started after I docked it to the other half the ship, donziboy said to try cycling the fuel type which I'm going to try when I get out of classes, along with a few other things... also I can send you a copy of my save and mods used if it will help.

[Scotius]

Wonder if it is similiar to the bug i am getting? I made new ship today, with 4 stacks of 1.25 reactors and thermal nozzles connected with fuel lines to AM tank. And again only one reactor produced thermal power. I used TAC fuel balancer to distribute TP evenly, but now i can't pump it around manually using Alt+right click. Ship uses liquid fuel only, so i can't switch the propellant. I'm going to dock it to another ship and try again.