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

[Scotius]

I really want to try this mod out...and it would be my first...but, I think I should keep working on getting the other aspects of the vanilla game down first. I only just completed my first keostationary orbit, and still haven't successfully docked two ships yet. Nor have I been anywhere but Mun, and haven't landed there yet. Though I have managed to build a quite successful SSTO, also.

Keep up the good work, Fractal_UK. This one's going to be at the top of my list of things to try.

Anyone have any recommendations for mods that compliment this one well, just in case?

You still can do a lot of fun things with this mod without going interplanetary. Setting a constellation of solar power plants in keostationary orbit for one. Building research station, antimatter collecting station, building a lander with hybrid aluminium engine, setting refuelling station on Minmus using Science Lab ability to electrolyse fuel and oxidiser...List is long

[theSpeare]

Fractal Fractal! I just had a great idea!

Add in Science like a resource in Kethane. Such that regions in bodies will have a large science generation but will eventually run out (e.g. nothing more to learn). Essentially it'd be like you're "mining" for science. Some areas will probably even have faster generation.

[Scotius]

Fractal Fractal! I just had a great idea!

Add in Science like a resource in Kethane. Such that regions in bodies will have a large science generation but will eventually run out (e.g. nothing more to learn). Essentially it'd be like you're "mining" for science. Some areas will probably even have faster generation.

You've just described how science is supposed to be generated in 0.22 Guys, the update is in experimental phase already according to the news - probably KSP Weekly will give us more info today. Let's wait and see.

[NeoAcario]

Think I found a small oversight... and forgive me if this has already been addressed... but it seems the 1.25m, 2.5m, 3.75m Thermal Rocket Nozzles all have the same mass of 6 tons. This can't be right. Anyone have an opinion on the values they should have? Or is this actually intended?

~Steve

[zzz]

Or is this actually intended?

Seems so. Difference is pure cosmetic, as Fractal said, all have same stats

[forsaken1111]

The sun does provide the best source of antimatter generation at the moment: an orbit of 392 000 km will give you this magical number (I believe it's something like 10^-2 flux).

I believe Fractal_UK said that the sun is the second best, behind Jool.

Think I found a small oversight... and forgive me if this has already been addressed... but it seems the 1.25m, 2.5m, 3.75m Thermal Rocket Nozzles all have the same mass of 6 tons. This can't be right. Anyone have an opinion on the values they should have? Or is this actually intended?

~Steve

It has been addressed. The size of rocket nozzle is purely visual as all the part is, is a nozzle. Each one has the same thrust/mechanics and same mass, he just provided one for each common stack size so they didn't look silly.

[Aghanim]

Is this just me or there is a bug that turned VAB placed phased array microwave transmitter into the usual microwave beamed power transmitter?

[Donziboy2]

Is this just me or there is a bug that turned VAB placed phased array microwave transmitter into the usual microwave beamed power transmitter?

Did you install the latest version over an older version of KSP Interstellar?

[Aghanim]

I install the latest version over an older version, is that the problem? If that is the problem, how do i solve it?

[Donziboy2]

I install the latest version over an older version, is that the problem? If that is the problem, how do i solve it?

Delete the whole Mod from inside the gamedata folder, then put the latest version in there. There is some model changes and the old models may interfere with the new ones.

Not all the old files get overwritten so they have to be deleted.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Donziboy2

[wasmic]

Oh, and Aghanim: backup the old version. If you don't, you'll have to prepare yourself to lose crafts.

[Donziboy2]

Oh, and Aghanim: backup the old version. If you don't, you'll have to prepare yourself to lose crafts.

Most of my craft survived the change over, they just look funny because the reactors and generators changed shapes, so some ships have parts clipping. The kraken did eat like my 10 smartest Kerbals but they reappeared a few hundred days later, now I have like 40 smart Kerbals

[NeoAcario]

Makes sense with the nozzle mass confusion... I have another question though:

What exactly do the Heat Sinks / Panels do? I'm wracking my brain here but I'm a bit tired. They give you a deeper threshold for WasteHeat...but how does that help? Allow your electric gens to run hotter or something?

~Steve

EDIT: And a quick "You're Awesome!" to Fractal_UK for this great mod. Very well balanced 'advanced' parts.. and I love how well it meshes with my already established kethane mining operation.

EDIT 2: I know I've missed it somewhere... but how exactly do you refuel your DT Vista engine?

Edited October 8, 2013 by NeoAcario

[Fractal_UK]

What exactly do the Heat Sinks / Panels do? I'm wracking my brain here but I'm a bit tired. They give you a deeper threshold for WasteHeat...but how does that help? Allow your electric gens to run hotter or something?

They don't actually do anything yet. Since I just added them recently I wanted to give people time to adapt their existing creations, rather than to create a massively breaking update that would cause hundreds of problems. In the future, you will want your WasteHeat bar to be as empty as possible.

EDIT 2: I know I've missed it somewhere... but how exactly do you refuel your DT Vista engine?

At the moment, you can only refuel the Deuterium part of the engine, you can do this at a science lab that is splashed down in ocean and choosing the centrifuge option. The next update is going to massively improve the resource system for the DT vista.

EDIT: And a quick "You're Awesome!" to Fractal_UK for this great mod. Very well balanced 'advanced' parts.. and I love how well it meshes with my already established kethane mining operation.

Cheers, always nice to hear that people are enjoying my work.

[NeoAcario]

They don't actually do anything yet. Since I just added them recently I wanted to give people time to adapt their existing creations, rather than to create a massively breaking update that would cause hundreds of problems. In the future, you will want your WasteHeat bar to be as empty as possible.

So you're saying we should start slapping them on everything to reduce the waste heat in the future. Is the value listed as waste heat how much each panel will reduce? I'm in the middle of building a new fleet and would love to know so I don't have to remake them later.

Cheers,

~Steve

[forsaken1111]

Fractal_UK

What would I need to do to ensure that resources from another mod were compatible with yours? For example if I added a resource called Aluminum which could be (in theory) extracted from a resource deposit, could that be used in your aluminum/oxygen rocket so long as it had the same name as your Aluminum resource? Would any conflicts arise from this?

[Fractal_UK]

So you're saying we should start slapping them on everything to reduce the waste heat in the future. Is the value listed as waste heat how much each panel will reduce? I'm in the middle of building a new fleet and would love to know so I don't have to remake them later.

If you mouseover the radiator in the VAB, it should tell you how many MW the radiator will dissipate with its base value and how much it will dissipate when upgraded. You can also right click on the part when you're in flight and it will tell you how much its getting rid of by radiation (everywhere) and by convection (in atmosphere).

A quick and dirty value for how many radiators you might want to have is enough to match the thermal power of the reactors on your ship minus "a bit."

Unfortunately, how many you actually need really depends on what you're going to be doing with the rocket. If the only time you're going to be using the reactor at full power is when you're firing the thermal engines, you won't need much radiator capacity at all (perhaps just a couple of small ones) because the engines will dump most of the heat away. You will only need lots of radiators if you're using large reactors and generators to power warp drives, run plasma engines or generate antimatter. These all recipes for creating loads of heat.

The easiest thing to do is probably to experiment a little bit, see which things make you fill up the WasteHeat bar quickly and then you can decide whether it suits your design to add more radiators or to avoid doing those things for long consecutive periods.

[forsaken1111]

I'd really like if you added a small but noticable amount of waste heat dissipation from the generator as well, and a larger passive dissipation while in atmosphere, whenever the generator is disabled or not producing power. It doesn't seem realistic that it could remain at high temperature forever with no passive loss at all.

[NeoAcario]

If you mouseover the radiator in the VAB, it should tell you how many MW the radiator will dissipate with its base value and how much it will dissipate when upgraded. You can also right click on the part when you're in flight and it will tell you how much its getting rid of by radiation (everywhere) and by convection (in atmosphere).

Thanks for the heads-up...can't believe I missed that. Guess I'll relaunch that 570ton Antimatter Power Station I just got into a perfect 250km LKO. UGH! Transferring those smart kerbins over will be a pain. Better to know and do it now!

Thanks again... really enjoying the new toys.

~Steve

PS. Upgraded 3m Antimatter reactor with 96k sphere Kethane tank makes for INSANE dV. Over 50k on my massive science vessel! 6k thrust with 14k isp? Yes please!

[forsaken1111]

Thanks for the heads-up...can't believe I missed that. Guess I'll relaunch that 570ton Antimatter Power Station I just got into a perfect 250km LKO. UGH! Transferring those smart kerbins over will be a pain. Better to know and do it now!

Thanks again... really enjoying the new toys.

~Steve

PS. Upgraded 3m Antimatter reactor with 96k sphere Kethane tank makes for INSANE dV. Over 50k on my massive science vessel! 6k thrust with 14k isp? Yes please!

Is that with a thermal nozzle? I'll have to try that once my AM collector around kerbin fills its tanks and i can fuel up my tug.

[Ashtoruin]

Is that with a thermal nozzle? I'll have to try that once my AM collector around kerbin fills its tanks and i can fuel up my tug.

Just wait till you upgrade those suckers, mine went from 20k-120k dV after ditching my Empty fuel tank and upgrading them

[cinder1992]

Just throwing this out there, there's a few problems with this Plugin when running it under Linux. my KSP.log file can be found here: http://pastebin.com/mBG68UUv

In the meantime, I was able to fix it under Linux by Symlinking the GameData directory to gamedata by navigating to the KSP directory and running

$ ln -s GameData gamedata

as well as renaming the 'WarpPlugin' folder to 'warpplugin'

A note to the dev: The problem was caused due to the Plugin looking for a file that apparently didn't exist (see: KSP.log line #3191), but the file was there, the plugin was just looking in the WRONG directory (in this case, 'gamedata/warpplugin' instead of 'GameData/WarpPlugin'), this does not matter for windows, but in Linux and MacOS it matters a lot, because Linux/MacOS requires Precice filenames.

[Fractal_UK]

Version 0.6.1 Released

By far the biggest non-major version update we have had.

The fusion resource system has finally be sorted out - DT Vista engines now use Deuterium and Tritium fuel. You can recover Deuterium to refuel it from the oceans, with a science lab, or by scooping from Jool's atmosphere. Tritium can be obtained by attaching a source of Lithium to a nuclear reactor and clicking the "Enable Tritium Breeding" option on the reactor.

It's also finally possible to transmit non-solar power via microwaves - this change was made by Conti, not by me, so credit should go to him for this feature.

I'm also introducing some inline radiators created by Kerbtrek, very good at convecting heat away in atmosphere but less effective in space.

Changelog

Version 0.6.1
-Added waste heat generation to all stock Solar Panels
-Added Lithium and Deuterium/Tritium Tanks
-Added Inline radiators created by Kerbtrek
-Added microwave nuclear transmission and relay functionality created by Conti
-Better inverse square law for all stock Solar Panels
-Nuclear reactors can turn Lithium into Tritium using Tritium Breeding option
-Changed DT Vista to use Tritium instead of Lithium fuel
-Changed DT Vista to capacity 15 Deuterium and 15 Tritium
-Added Lithium fuel option for Plasma engines
-Small rebalancing to science to incentivise landing on planets, landing will grant you double the science rate on most planets/moons,2.5x on Eve and 3x on Tylo
-Electrolysis of Aluminium/Oxygen possible on Tylo
-Radiation safety features not engaging quickly enough will no longer endanger Kerbal lives
-Plasma engine heat generation fixed
-ThermalPower flow changed to ALL_VESSEL
-Lithium and Deuterium now pumpable
-Generators and Engines not properly detected upgraded Reactor fixed
-Propellant loader path fixed for Linux compatability
-Fixed atmospheric altitude detection - stops improper radiator detachment
-Improved thermal rocket propellant autodetection
-Fixed 1.25m antimatter reactor antimatter consumption rates

Downloads links in the first page have been updated.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Fractal_UK

[NeoAcario]

Just wait till you upgrade those suckers, mine went from 20k-120k dV after ditching my Empty fuel tank and upgrading them

I just find it funny that it has so much dV even after weighing in at ~250tons when full of Kethane.

~Steve

EDIT: Hey Fractal_UK, how about making a couple flags for us?

[forsaken1111]

Excellent! Can't wait to try it out.

Are you still planning on adding in some fusion reactors as well? They could provide a middle ground between the longevity of nukes and the high output of antimatter, and there are plenty of neat fusion reactions to use to vary the output. Also we could refine helium3 from the mun.