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

[RoverDude]

So, as I said earlier, I've been looking at resource costs. Since I haven't really played 0.24 very much, I don't really have much understanding of how well this is going to work yet so my effort to derive them so far is based around very estimated real world costs of each resource converted into Kerbal money (I've vaguely assumed that 1 unit of Kerbal money = 1000 Euros, mainly because it was easiest to find some of the material costs in Euros). I'm thus quite open to feedback from more experienced players.

At first glance though, it seems to capture the value of some of the ISRU resources as well as nicely representing the extreme rarity of the advanced resources though I'm a little worried by how LqdMethane is so much cheaper than the stock propellants.

I've ordered the list by cost/ton so you can what is, in absolute terms, the most valuable (I notice investing in Lithium and a Nuclear reactor is probably going to be a good long-term moneymaking ploy!).

http://i.imgur.com/hi0R2Vi.png

Heya, here's a link to the vicinity of the discussion in the ORS thread where we were hashing out finally doing a consolidation of resources and getting everyone on the playground to play well together (My summary of discussions is there, earlier info in the thread)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64595-Open-Resource-System-%28ORS%29-Mod-Resource-API-version-1-3-0?p=1351754&viewfull=1#post1351754

The big ones were unifying on Water, ArgonGas, EnrichedUranium, DepletedUranium, etc.

Here's a link to the CRP worksheet which is the consolidated resources we've been sharing:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F2NYLj47O6VdThCXqBcI_hB-bDIMh4ZWB2FFyrjMLkg/edit#gid=650840806

To be blunt... right now things are kinda weird, as my entire mod constellation is flat out incompatible with this version of KSPI. I would very much like for there to be dialog to change that and get us in sync again in a way that does not trash a ton of saves. There was good, open dialog and compromise with myself, Nertea, and Wave, and I'd like to see a repeat of that. Naturally this is your mod so it's completely your game - and if in the end you decide that interop is not worth changes to KSPI (like sharing ORS maps, agreeing on cost, consolidating resources like Argon v ArgonGas or Water v LqdWater), then that too is totally cool. I would just need to know sooner rather than later as it has a pretty significant effect on my entire mod constellation.

My PM is open

[EDIT]

Oh - and here's a link to the CRP thread. Basically establishing a shared repo for resource commonality, shared ORS maps, etc. - I would love KSPI to participate in this, since there would be a weird irony if KSPI (the original source of ORS) was not in the same playground as the other folks using ORS

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91998

[Ixonal]

So, as I said earlier, I've been looking at resource costs. Since I haven't really played 0.24 very much, I don't really have much understanding of how well this is going to work yet so my effort to derive them so far is based around very estimated real world costs of each resource converted into Kerbal money (I've vaguely assumed that 1 unit of Kerbal money = 1000 Euros, mainly because it was easiest to find some of the material costs in Euros). I'm thus quite open to feedback from more experienced players.

At first glance though, it seems to capture the value of some of the ISRU resources as well as nicely representing the extreme rarity of the advanced resources though I'm a little worried by how LqdMethane is so much cheaper than the stock propellants.

I've ordered the list by cost/ton so you can what is, in absolute terms, the most valuable (I notice investing in Lithium and a Nuclear reactor is probably going to be a good long-term moneymaking ploy!).

http://i.imgur.com/hi0R2Vi.png

I like how horrendously expensive antimatter is in that XD. I wonder if people will make extra farms to produce and sell it >.>

As for methane, who's to say it's as abundant on Kerbin as it is on Earth. No reason you can't fudge the numbers a little bit...

[Fractal_UK]

Heya, here's a link to the vicinity of the discussion in the ORS thread where we were hashing out finally doing a consolidation of resources and getting everyone on the playground to play well together (My summary of discussions is there, earlier info in the thread)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64595-Open-Resource-System-%28ORS%29-Mod-Resource-API-version-1-3-0?p=1351754&viewfull=1#post1351754

The big ones were unifying on Water, ArgonGas, EnrichedUranium, DepletedUranium, etc.

...

I have looked at that document, albeit only fair briefly. There are certain things things that aren't a problem to integrate, water and argon particularly are very straightforward and could just be changed without consequence. That document has the cost of water similarly trivially cheap and I hadn't even considered the cost of Argon as you can see on the previous page.

The nuclear fuels look like the sticking point because the fission reactors in Interstellar are one of the most fleshed out parts of the mod and one of the most interesting from a realism standpoint, even if they get used less than many others because they offer far fewer advantages over stock parts. As such, I'm not really interested in adopting a "Enriched Uranium"/"Depleted Uranium" fuel cycle and will definitely be sticking with Uranium(UF4 and UN) and Thorium (ThF4) fuel cycles. My solution to having multiple types of Uranium was to have a refinery processing option to convert between them but that may not be an ideal solution for the Community Pack, I don't know but I'll give it some further thought.

[RoverDude]

I have looked at that document, albeit only fair briefly. There are certain things things that aren't a problem to integrate, water and argon particularly are very straightforward and could just be changed without consequence. That document has the cost of water similarly trivially cheap and I hadn't even considered the cost of Argon as you can see on the previous page.

The nuclear fuels look like the sticking point because the fission reactors in Interstellar are one of the most fleshed out parts of the mod and one of the most interesting from a realism standpoint, even if they get used less than many others because they offer far fewer advantages over stock parts. As such, I'm not really interested in adopting a "Enriched Uranium"/"Depleted Uranium" fuel cycle and will definitely be sticking with Uranium(UF4 and UN) and Thorium (ThF4) fuel cycles. My solution to having multiple types of Uranium was to have a refinery processing option to convert between them but that may not be an ideal solution for the Community Pack, I don't know but I'll give it some further thought.

Makes sense, let me know what tweaks you'd be interested in and we can sort out how to get those into the playground (or at least not have them conflict). The other request would be that ORS not ship with atmospheric/oceanic definitions, leaving those up to the mods (i.e. move them into KSPI), leaving ORS as a blank slate. And let me know if KSPI is interested in distribution via CRP (we'd just add back in any of the KSPI resources not already in there - most are already there).

[petros_a_l]

The nuclear fuels look like the sticking point because the fission reactors in Interstellar are one of the most fleshed out parts of the mod and one of the most interesting from a realism standpoint, even if they get used less than many others because they offer far fewer advantages over stock parts. As such, I'm not really interested in adopting a "Enriched Uranium"/"Depleted Uranium" fuel cycle and will definitely be sticking with Uranium(UF4 and UN) and Thorium (ThF4) fuel cycles. My solution to having multiple types of Uranium was to have a refinery processing option to convert between them but that may not be an ideal solution for the Community Pack, I don't know but I'll give it some further thought.

This exactly was my only objection on KSPI lite thread. Thorium is probably the next step in nuclear reactor technology before fusion. China is supposed to have a Molten Salt Reactor ready by 2020, and the most οptimistic senarios put fusion at 2025 to 2030 although a more realistic guess would be around 2045. Maybe for simplicity you could change them to enriched uranium and thorium but droping the later completely seems like skipping a step, it is like going to uranium from coal.

Edited September 15, 2014 by petros_a_l

[RoverDude]

This exactly was my only objection on KSPI lite thread. Thorium is probably the next step in nuclear reactor technology before fusion. China is supposed to have a Molten Salt Reactor ready by 2020, and the most οptimistic senarios put fusion at 2025 to 2030 although a more realistic guess would be around 2045. Maybe for simplicity you could change them to enriched uranium and thorium but droping the later completely seems like skipping a step, it is like going to uranium from coal.

I'd be pleased as punch with that compromise, tbh. Also would want to sort out what's harvested from the dirt vs. what we put in the reactors. But up to Fractal to see how close we can get.

[Fractal_UK]

I'd be pleased as punch with that compromise, tbh. Also would want to sort out what's harvested from the dirt vs. what we put in the reactors. But up to Fractal to see how close we can get.

Well, from a realism perspective, it would make the most sense to set up something like Pitchblende (or Uranite) as a primary resource that you dig out of the ground, then have different processing of that ore transforming it into different types of nuclear fuel. That approach would represent extra work for everyone but is perhaps more sensible in the context of a community project where different people are trying to describe types of reactor and fuel. I'll keep thinking on it though, perhaps there is a more elegant solution.

[RoverDude]

Well, from a realism perspective, it would make the most sense to set up something like Pitchblende (or Uranite) as a primary resource that you dig out of the ground, then have different processing of that ore transforming it into different types of nuclear fuel. That approach would represent extra work for everyone but is perhaps more sensible in the context of a community project where different people are trying to describe types of reactor and fuel. I'll keep thinking on it though, perhaps there is a more elegant solution.

Thanks! Really appreciate it Let me know where you land and we'll start work to get everyone to meet together.

[galactictaco]

will there be plans to make things a little less maintenance heavy? or is that considered an essential feature? im referring to constant refueling missions mostly. i feel like real life reactors last more than a few months. the fuel farming process feels a bit grueling too, but i can live with it as long as im not constantly launching more fuel. even just making fuel canisters hold more active fuel....is this .... i can fix in the config files?

[Mortal]

It's because the mod was compiled for KSP v0.23.5 and some changes were made to the KSP API for version 0.24 which broke the mod. I have a working development version but the release version isn't quite ready yet, stay tuned!

Gotcha, thanks so much! The mod is awesome btw.

[undercoveryankee]

will there be plans to make things a little less maintenance heavy? or is that considered an essential feature? im referring to constant refueling missions mostly. i feel like real life reactors last more than a few months. the fuel farming process feels a bit grueling too, but i can live with it as long as im not constantly launching more fuel. even just making fuel canisters hold more active fuel....is this .... i can fix in the config files?

Spacecraft reactors are a lot lighter than terrestrial reactors of the same power level, and shorter life is part of how they pay for that. Fuel burn rate is calculated from the power output and the energy density of the fuel, so just like in real life there's only so long you can get a gigawatt of power out of a few tons of fuel. The most realistic solution is probably to have lower-power variants of the larger reactor sizes for applications where fuel capacity is more important than ease of moving.

[Meltafire]

So, as I said earlier, I've been looking at resource costs. Since I haven't really played 0.24 very much, I don't really have much understanding of how well this is going to work yet so my effort to derive them so far is based around very estimated real world costs of each resource converted into Kerbal money (I've vaguely assumed that 1 unit of Kerbal money = 1000 Euros, mainly because it was easiest to find some of the material costs in Euros). I'm thus quite open to feedback from more experienced players.

At first glance though, it seems to capture the value of some of the ISRU resources as well as nicely representing the extreme rarity of the advanced resources though I'm a little worried by how LqdMethane is so much cheaper than the stock propellants.

I've ordered the list by cost/ton so you can what is, in absolute terms, the most valuable (I notice investing in Lithium and a Nuclear reactor is probably going to be a good long-term moneymaking ploy!).

http://i.imgur.com/hi0R2Vi.png

Hello. Thank you for your mod. Big fan. So in case if you want prices close to reality I do some personal research about KSPI pricing. If your want help PM me. So here is my initial points for calculation.

1. How much is Kerbin Fund? We have a stock part for liquid fuel. If we count it as high quality Kerosene then we can count price by weight. It's easy to find a price for ton of kerosene (see how much money Russia spend on Soyuz launch).

2. Point where you can translate prices for your mod is LV-N engine. Players must have a reasonable choice between LV-N and KSPI atomic engine (1.25 basic reactor+fuel+1.25nozzle+3*1.25 inlineradiators) by price because it's historicly near the same things. Maybe for that reason you must override LV-N (because fuel costs a lot).

3. Your pricing for fuels is some how wrong. Here is logic. Why Antimatter do cost so much? Because it's hard to produce IRL. But in KSPI it's so much easy. So price is so much lower. Same for other resorces.

4. Monsters of the price are Generators. KSPI power generators power ouput is like power plant generators. Do find some pricing on gas turbines ( for example siemens gas turbines)

[Thorbane]

Hello. Thank you for your mod. Big fan. So in case if you want prices close to reality I do some personal research about KSPI pricing. If your want help PM me. So here is my initial points for calculation.

1. How much is Kerbin Fund? We have a stock part for liquid fuel. If we count it as high quality Kerosene then we can count price by weight. It's easy to find a price for ton of kerosene (see how much money Russia spend on Soyuz launch).

2. Point where you can translate prices for your mod is LV-N engine. Players must have a reasonable choice between LV-N and KSPI atomic engine (1.25 basic reactor+fuel+1.25nozzle+3*1.25 inlineradiators) by price because it's historicly near the same things. Maybe for that reason you must override LV-N (because fuel costs a lot).

3. Your pricing for fuels is some how wrong. Here is logic. Why Antimatter do cost so much? Because it's hard to produce IRL. But in KSPI it's so much easy. So price is so much lower. Same for other resorces.

4. Monsters of the price are Generators. KSPI power generators power ouput is like power plant generators. Do find some pricing on gas turbines ( for example siemens gas turbines)

That's the price per ton of antimatter. That larges AM tank holds a mere 270 grams.

*crunches numbers*

... and is worth 13 Billion. Ok. That might just be a bit much. We probably don't want to overflow the funds bar.

[Rayder]

That's the price per ton of antimatter. That larges AM tank holds a mere 270 grams.

*crunches numbers*

... and is worth 13 Billion. Ok. That might just be a bit much. We probably don't want to overflow the funds bar.

If Interstellar will still require you to collect AM (and not be available from the VAB) then the cost shouldn't matter.

I like how horrendously expensive antimatter is in that XD. I wonder if people will make extra farms to produce and sell it >.>

That's something I didn't really think of. If Antimatter is stupidly expensive, it could be possible to farm it and recover it at KSC, recovering absurd amounts of credits.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Rayder

[sober667]

If Interstellar will still require you to collect AM (and not be available from the VAB) then the cost shouldn't matter.

That's something I didn't really think of. If Antimatter is stupidly expensive, it could be possible to farm it and recover it at KSC, recovering absurd amounts of credits.

cost matterbecouse u can collect it and ship back to the ground so one ship of smallest container give u huge profit and recowering from landing on lauchpad.....

[RoverDude]

If Interstellar will still require you to collect AM (and not be available from the VAB) then the cost shouldn't matter.

That's something I didn't really think of. If Antimatter is stupidly expensive, it could be possible to farm it and recover it at KSC, recovering absurd amounts of credits.

cost matterbecouse u can collect it and ship back to the ground so one ship of smallest container give u huge profit and recowering from landing on lauchpad.....

This.

I'd be very careful with excessive cost of any background collectible resource that you can collect in LKO. It will be abused If it's non-tweakable with a cost of zero, then there's no value in collection other than use. Then you can also do what we did with Karborundum, and sell tiny tanks of it for a horrendous tank cost as 'experimental lab samples' so people can test things out, but have a very steep cost to do so without adding a funds faucet.

[Rayder]

cost matterbecouse u can collect it and ship back to the ground so one ship of smallest container give u huge profit and recowering from landing on lauchpad.....

My opinion is it depends on if Antimatter will be available from the VAB.

If it will be, then the cost will matter. As you could recover it, obtain funds and re-launch vessels with Antimatter. If it won't be, then it's really easy. Make the cost 0.

EDIT: Rover beat me to it

[Grunf911]

Hmm, lets see

KW Rocketry updated

B9 got an overhaul

Infernal Robotics updated with cool changes

RemoteTech2 now works with 0.24.2

KSP Interstellar is being worked on (both by Fractal being back and some improvements done by Wave)

Karbonite as alternative to Kethane

MKS/OKS and many other USI provided by Rover

...and many many more done by this great community

...I sense a Golden Age coming

Edited September 16, 2014 by Grunf911

[oktav]

Welcome Back Fractal_UK,

I added a couple of things to KSPI lite that should be compatile with the main-version without major changes.

If you are interested in them I can see to do a pull request to your repository.

He-3 decay in background: https://github.com/WaveFunctionP/KSPInterstellar/pull/19

All radiators glow: https://github.com/WaveFunctionP/KSPInterstellar/pull/10

[stellarator]

Welcome back! Have you planned something like a "patch" for 0.24? Nor the complete release, only fix the bugs because... i have researched fusion reactors on my savegame, but they can't produce nothing and... I dont want delete it.

Thanks for this mod!

[HerrGeneral]

One more thing I'd like to see fixed- radiators break instantaneously upon contacting the atmosphere. And I don't mean they break at 25-30km like solar panels do- I mean that they break at 69km, the instant the craft enters the atmosphere. It's a small thing, but I've broken radiators multiple times because I triggered the action group when I was at 68km or something like that, assuming that it would be safe.

[K3-Chris]

One more thing I'd like to see fixed- radiators break instantaneously upon contacting the atmosphere. And I don't mean they break at 25-30km like solar panels do- I mean that they break at 69km, the instant the craft enters the atmosphere. It's a small thing, but I've broken radiators multiple times because I triggered the action group when I was at 68km or something like that, assuming that it would be safe.

Huh is that a recent bug? I remember opening the radiators in .23.5 at altitudes still technically inside the atmosphere.

[Scottish_Baconator]

I am having a strange bug an do not know where to report it to.

What happens is when I mouse over an object it will expand until it disapeares after it reaches a certain size and the info starts flashing.

[diomedea]

I am having a strange bug an do not know where to report it to.

What happens is when I mouse over an object it will expand until it disapeares after it reaches a certain size and the info starts flashing.

This reminds me of an issue with specific parts, considered a bug still present with KSP 0.24.2, that was successfully dealt with by Modulefixer (here where to download that mod). Maybe that fixes also your issue.

[light_odin5]

i have he same bug it is the part icon that swells until it reaces a certain point. then the icon is gone and most of the part info is now flashing.

i use ksp 0.23.4.464

and i hve tried three versions of module manager: 2.2.1 ; 2.2.0 ; 1.5.6

please help it is really annoying and i really want to play this mod