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

[Serino]

I've been using this mod for a while and never had this problem until just now with .25. I attached electric generators to my fusion reactor and they automatically set to direct conversion but there is no option for me to switch them over to thermal conversion. I could have sworn there used to be a way to change that or am I just remembering wrong?

[GreeningGalaxy]

I found that deleting the tree.cfg from my save file and selecting 'stock' when the treeloader selection box came up fixed the node problem.

I am, however, having trouble with a lot of other things:

Tritium breeding is still broken as far as I can tell. The button is there, but I have yet to see it do anything.

The new magnetic nozzles have the scale problem, but I used the fix on page 1209 to move their nodes around. They seem pretty underpowered in my opinion, at least when hooked up to a reactor that only puts out ~30% of its power as charged particles. I don't really see how we're supposed to get them to full power without running a reactor for 100% charged particles (aka Helium-3 mode), but the button to swap fuel mode to helium-3 is conveniently absent as well. It makes sense that you might not be able to get more than 3000s Isp out of a thermal rocket, but I was hoping the magnetic nozzles would be the new high-power high-Isp solution to make antimatter worth collecting- that just doesn't seem to be the case. 675 kN isn't bad, but I have yet to find a configuration that gives me more than 150 kN, which, when pushing a 100-ton ship around, feels a little like connecting a PB-ION to an orange tank. As the mod is now, I can't really think of what I'd want antimatter bad enough for that I'd be willing to fly a collector to Jool and back for it- I don't really need 7000 kN out of a thermal rocket. Couldn't we see something like beam-core antimatter rockets with the magnetic nozzle parts? That's what I originally was hoping for when I saw that they'd been added.

[Atrius129]

I found that deleting the tree.cfg from my save file and selecting 'stock' when the treeloader selection box came up fixed the node problem.

I believe this applied only to 0.24.2. As of 0.25 Treeloader hasn't worked at all.

BTW, awesome sig.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Atrius129

[Rune]

I found that deleting the tree.cfg from my save file and selecting 'stock' when the treeloader selection box came up fixed the node problem.

I am, however, having trouble with a lot of other things:

Tritium breeding is still broken as far as I can tell. The button is there, but I have yet to see it do anything.

The new magnetic nozzles have the scale problem, but I used the fix on page 1209 to move their nodes around. They seem pretty underpowered in my opinion, at least when hooked up to a reactor that only puts out ~30% of its power as charged particles. I don't really see how we're supposed to get them to full power without running a reactor for 100% charged particles (aka Helium-3 mode), but the button to swap fuel mode to helium-3 is conveniently absent as well. It makes sense that you might not be able to get more than 3000s Isp out of a thermal rocket, but I was hoping the magnetic nozzles would be the new high-power high-Isp solution to make antimatter worth collecting- that just doesn't seem to be the case. 675 kN isn't bad, but I have yet to find a configuration that gives me more than 150 kN, which, when pushing a 100-ton ship around, feels a little like connecting a PB-ION to an orange tank. As the mod is now, I can't really think of what I'd want antimatter bad enough for that I'd be willing to fly a collector to Jool and back for it- I don't really need 7000 kN out of a thermal rocket. Couldn't we see something like beam-core antimatter rockets with the magnetic nozzle parts? That's what I originally was hoping for when I saw that they'd been added.

Tirtium breeding work fine as rain for me. You just have to have a lithium container to transmutate that into the Tritium, an ACTIVE reactor, and time. Fission reactors produce more on account of not using any to work. And to get He3, you could wait for that Tritium to decay, but Ihear that is indeed broken and only happens when you are looking, not when you are doing your thing with other ships.

Magnetic nozzles are realistic: you need lots of electricity to run them, and their thrust is tiny. That's the way they would work in RL. It would be nice if there was a more sane alternative to fuel it than getting He3 from Jool or waiting for literally years for the Tritium to decay, or waiting for antimatter, though. p-B11 fusion is also >80% charged particles, and those isotopes should be much easier to collect. But you know, end-tree tech should make you sweat for it so I'm cool with that.

My beef is actually with monopropellant production. How the hell am I supposed to get Ammonia on Kerbin? One would think than having water and air available, NH3 would be a matter of electricity and machinery, but nope, apparently you have to go all the way to Laythe to get monoprop, or the very unclear/moldy wiki is misleading me. Am I missing something?

Rune. I have missed stuff before, Kod knows, so that might be the issue.

[PhoeniXYZ]

Is there a way to enable antimatter procurement in the sandbox?

[WaveFunctionP]

My beef is actually with monopropellant production. How the hell am I supposed to get Ammonia on Kerbin? One would think than having water and air available, NH3 would be a matter of electricity and machinery, but nope, apparently you have to go all the way to Laythe to get monoprop, or the very unclear/moldy wiki is misleading me. Am I missing something?

You need an atmospheric scoop (nitrogen) and liquid fuel (hydrogen) to make ammonia I believe. You can make hydrogen with electrolysis of water. Be sure to check your fuel lines.

[merendel]

From what I've seen, science/rep to funds are completely useless, and funds to science/rep is insanely overpowered. You get something around 5k science if you go full science on normal just from a basic explore the mun mission.

converting to funds isnt useless just nowhere near as OP as going to science. I more often direct the rep over to funds as a boost. Once your established and your rep is geting high the stuff is prety worthless.

[birdspider]

While building a 0.65 m (tiny) sattelit with attila engine, I found out that there is no (tiny-small) LiquidF-Only tank (no oxydizer) in my mod setup.

Does anyone know a mod which provides one one?

I thought about copying/edititing the Toroidal Fuel Tank to come as a LF-only version, but before I do that I want to get some feedback if maybe there is a mod out there that has what I need.

[BigD145]

While building a 0.65 m (tiny) sattelit with attila engine, I found out that there is no (tiny-small) LiquidF-Only tank (no oxydizer) in my mod setup.

Does anyone know a mod which provides one one?

I thought about copying/edititing the Toroidal Fuel Tank to come as a LF-only version, but before I do that I want to get some feedback if maybe there is a mod out there that has what I need.

Remove the oxidizer in the VAB?

[Whovian]

Remove the oxidizer in the VAB?

Or Modular Fuel Tanks should also work; there might be weird interactions with TweakScale but AFAIK that's the only real issue. B9's fuselages are slightly wonky, but it's really more of an "aesthetic" issue than anything. (I should point out I'm using the word aesthetic in an unusual manner here.)

Edited October 25, 2014 by Whovian

[BigD145]

Modular Fuel Tanks has its own issues with not working with tons of mods. Same with Real Fuels. TweakScale is a bit more compatible.

[GreeningGalaxy]

Tirtium breeding work fine as rain for me. You just have to have a lithium container to transmutate that into the Tritium, an ACTIVE reactor, and time. Fission reactors produce more on account of not using any to work. And to get He3, you could wait for that Tritium to decay, but Ihear that is indeed broken and only happens when you are looking, not when you are doing your thing with other ships.

Magnetic nozzles are realistic: you need lots of electricity to run them, and their thrust is tiny. That's the way they would work in RL. It would be nice if there was a more sane alternative to fuel it than getting He3 from Jool or waiting for literally years for the Tritium to decay, or waiting for antimatter, though. p-B11 fusion is also >80% charged particles, and those isotopes should be much easier to collect. But you know, end-tree tech should make you sweat for it so I'm cool with that.

My beef is actually with monopropellant production. How the hell am I supposed to get Ammonia on Kerbin? One would think than having water and air available, NH3 would be a matter of electricity and machinery, but nope, apparently you have to go all the way to Laythe to get monoprop, or the very unclear/moldy wiki is misleading me. Am I missing something?

Rune. I have missed stuff before, Kod knows, so that might be the issue.

As of this morning, tritium breeding a fuel-mode swapping seem to have mysteriously fixed themselves. I'm still puzzled as to how to run magnetic nozzles at full power, though - in the VAB, it says their maximum thrust is 650 kN and max Isp is 32000s, but I don't even get a third of that when I hook them up to a 3.75-meter fusion reactor. I also tried putting an antimatter reactor behind the fusion one to see if jamming more electricity into the system would help, but that didn't do anything either. I'm still confused: can the magnetic nozzles even be run at full power? If so, how? I still have yet to get more thrust or Isp out of them than a plasma engine of similar size.

[Shtirliz72]

I just don't understand one things: why are all dependenses of this mod so outdated?

[Atrius129]

While building a 0.65 m (tiny) sattelit with attila engine, I found out that there is no (tiny-small) LiquidF-Only tank (no oxydizer) in my mod setup.

Does anyone know a mod which provides one one?

I thought about copying/edititing the Toroidal Fuel Tank to come as a LF-only version, but before I do that I want to get some feedback if maybe there is a mod out there that has what I need.

Procedural Parts all the way. With it you can make tanks pretty much any size that you want. You can also do cones and filleted cylinders, giving you a lot more possibilities for ship design than you would stock. Batteries, monoprop, and structural fuselage are all available as well as support for a bunch of mods. It is great for lowering part count as you can just use one giant tank. The cone tanks are invaluable when it comes to adapting your craft to different sizes (i.e. a way to adapt those pesky vistas from 3m to 2m). I also either throw a conical battery or monoprop tank at the termination of every stack, giving ships a much smoother design and lower part-count.

[AetherGoddess]

I just don't understand one things: why are all dependenses of this mod so outdated?

This mod has been around since .18, i think? it was on version 8 when i started modding in .22. the dependencies of this mod are outdated because they used to not be and time is unrelenting.

[BigD145]

I just don't understand one things: why are all dependenses of this mod so outdated?

Because they are locked down by licenses. Not all mods are released completely open to anyone to do with as they please.

[tom8914]

MY original question:

Does an active microwave receiver reduce the effectiveness of heat radiators?

I ask because whenever I turn a microwave power receiver on the radiators instantly drop temperature, and when I turn the receiver off the temperature instantly goes back up. (I am working with upgraded radiators)

I KNOW I am turning them on as RECEIVERS because I am using them to power ENGINES....

Microwave RECEIVERS/TRANSMITTERS should generate heat as a byproduct of operation (kinda analogous to solar panel waste heat but different, probably)

I would want my radiators to be cold for something like a GENERATOR that increases efficiency with a larger temp gradient.... Interstellar does not make your radiators cold, you have to put enough of them on that they stabilize at a low temp (heat in = heat out)

My complaint is that if I have 4 upgraded radiators I can radiate enough heat while the RECEIVER is off, but when the receiver(I before E except after C!!!!!) is ON the radiator temp is halved and heat radiated is ~quartered

I wanted to know if the radiators are SUPPOSED to do this (for a reason I do not know) or if it is an unintended bug (for no reason) that needs fixing

Also, the reception slider does not seem to have an effect on receiver heat generation (I will double check this complaint later today)

Also folding heat radiators seem to cause a LOT of lag in the VAB (symmetry something with folded radiators and let the drag and wait process begin!!!! VIVA Editor Extensions)

[Atrius129]

MY original question:

Does an active microwave receiver reduce the effectiveness of heat radiators?

I ask because whenever I turn a microwave power receiver on the radiators instantly drop temperature, and when I turn the receiver off the temperature instantly goes back up. (I am working with upgraded radiators)

I KNOW I am turning them on as RECEIVERS because I am using them to power ENGINES....

Microwave RECEIVERS/TRANSMITTERS should generate heat as a byproduct of operation (kinda analogous to solar panel waste heat but different, probably)

I would want my radiators to be cold for something like a GENERATOR that increases efficiency with a larger temp gradient.... Interstellar does not make your radiators cold, you have to put enough of them on that they stabilize at a low temp (heat in = heat out)

My complaint is that if I have 4 upgraded radiators I can radiate enough heat while the RECEIVER is off, but when the receiver(I before E except after C!!!!!) is ON the radiator temp is halved and heat radiated is ~quartered

I wanted to know if the radiators are SUPPOSED to do this (for a reason I do not know) or if it is an unintended bug (for no reason) that needs fixing

Also, the reception slider does not seem to have an effect on receiver heat generation (I will double check this complaint later today)

Also folding heat radiators seem to cause a LOT of lag in the VAB (symmetry something with folded radiators and let the drag and wait process begin!!!! VIVA Editor Extensions)

This is NOT supposed to be happening, and is not an issue I have encountered before. I had issues on a previous save where I had 1TW+ power in my microwave network, and would quickly shut down any ship not equipped with enough radiators. This wouldn't be an issue if the reception for a vessel could be set, say from the MJ manager.

[Avernikas]

Just wondering if anyone has had this issue....

Only happens to that one refinery, if I launch it isn't attached and is gone when I revert back to VAB.

[wolverine5pl]

I love this mod.. but useless in career mode as I cant get tech tree to work. no matter what I do I get default Kerbal tree

[Atrius129]

I love this mod.. but useless in career mode as I cant get tech tree to work. no matter what I do I get default Kerbal tree

Page 1209.

[GreeningGalaxy]

Just wondering if anyone has had this issue....

Only happens to that one refinery, if I launch it isn't attached and is gone when I revert back to VAB.

That refinery can't be attached by its bottom node, only its side node. Apparently you can change that with cfg editing, but that will make it impossible to attach it by its radial node - the game has to pick only one. Couldn't tell you why.

[Northstar1989]

My beef is actually with monopropellant production. How the hell am I supposed to get Ammonia on Kerbin? One would think than having water and air available, NH3 would be a matter of electricity and machinery, but nope, apparently you have to go all the way to Laythe to get monoprop, or the very unclear/moldy wiki is misleading me. Am I missing something?

Didn't FractalUK recently add in the Haber Process, after I extensively bugged him to add it in, so that we could produce Ammonia on Kerbin? Or was that just my imagination? (now I'm going to have to go load up an ISRU reactor on the pad, and see if it's got the Haber Process listed anywhere...)

If not... see my next post.

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

@FractalUK

Adding to the list of things I've noticed so far that need fixing in KSP-Interstellar (current list: 100% of beamed power available being turned into WasteHeat rather than Reception limiting WasteHeat production, and the Meth/LOX engine having too low of an ISP and TWR compared to its real-world counterpart) are two more that deal specifically with the atmosphere of Kerbin.

Namely, there's not much we can do with Nitrogen. Despite Nitrogen being abundantly available in Kerbin's atmosphere, it doesn't appear that we can perform something as simple as the Haber Process to produce our own Ammonia, and thus eventually, Monopropellant from it (this could be useful for a variety of reasons...), and we cannot use the Nitrogen as a plasma thruster propellant, despite this being perhaps the single closest design of plasma thruster to actually seeing real-life utilization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicon_Double_Layer_Thruster

I would very much like to be able to perform BOTH of these functions (the Haber Process, and using Nitrogen as a plasma thruster propellant). Ideally, WITHOUT having to land on the surface of Kerbin, so I can build something like a Propulsive Fluid Accumulator for Ammonia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propulsive_fluid_accumulator

Using Nitrogen as a plasma thruster propellant would actually make it feasible to maintain a 60 km x 60 km "orbit" on Kerbin to collect Oxygen (and possibly also surplus Nitrogen) for a fuel depot, using Nitrogen from the upper atmosphere in a plasma thruster to counteract drag... (Thermal Tubojets don't operate at such high speeds, and if they did would have too low of an ISP to counteract the drag produced by even just their intakes at those speeds...)

Speaking of which, it would also GREATLY be appreciated if you allowed Atmospheric Scoops and ISRU refineries (utilizing gas resources) to work *JUST OUTSIDE* of the atmospheres- like is ALREADY implemented in the Karbonite mod- so we could accumulate atmospheric gasses at a slow-rate in time-warp without having to babysit a plane or rocket flying at 4x physics warp in order to run an atmospheric scoop, which can get EXTREMELY annoying... Doing so would also open the door to allowing these atmospheric-accumulators to work when the craft is unloaded- much like Tritium Breeding (and nuclear fuel decay) currently does; and Antimatter Collection, ISRU mining/refining operations, and Science Labs all *should* (and do, to various degrees of effectiveness, depending on the current version and bugs...)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 26, 2014 by Northstar1989

[sober667]

Just wondering if anyone has had this issue....

Only happens to that one refinery, if I launch it isn't attached and is gone when I revert back to VAB.

its not issue with interstellar that things in KSP works so the main node is smaller one in this rafinerry if u wana attach to the big one u need place it first or edit nodes in cfg file