What do I change in the game files to charge an empty battery on a probe in-flight?

[Person012345]

I wasn't sure where to put this and I am just assuming it can be done so...

Well I sent a probe to duna, I retracted the solar panels for aero braking and then I... forgot to extend them again. The game has already saved itself and I'm wondering what I can do to recharge the battery now since I don't want to abandon the mission over such a stupid thing (which I always seem to do by the way... I sometimes think it would be nice if the panels would auto-extend at 0.01 charge just for numpties like me, but that's another discussion). So yeah, how do I do this?

Edited September 29, 2013 by Person012345

[Captain Sierra]

Go into the persistent. It will be a wall of text. You need to look for vessel{} tags. They contain the active ships. One of the first things is the vessel name. Identify your probe. Scroll through the text, which is basically the config info for all the parts in the craft. Find at least one battery. at said battery, there are two resource lines. Resources and max resources. Change the first number, which should be zero, to the same as the second, and you have a fully recharged battery. Save, then start KSP back up. You should now have charge left, enough to open the panels and start getting power. Also, a single RTG is enough to keep probe cores alive (but not run torque or ion drives). They can act as failsafes.

[Person012345]

Thanks. ^.^

[carlorizzante]

On 9/29/2013 at 0:34 AM, Captain Sierra said:

Go into the persistent. It will be a wall of text. You need to look for vessel{} tags. They contain the active ships. One of the first things is the vessel name. Identify your probe. Scroll through the text, which is basically the config info for all the parts in the craft. Find at least one battery. at said battery, there are two resource lines. Resources and max resources. Change the first number, which should be zero, to the same as the second, and you have a fully recharged battery. Save, then start KSP back up. You should now have charge left, enough to open the panels and start getting power. Also, a single RTG is enough to keep probe cores alive (but not run torque or ion drives). They can act as failsafes.

Thanks!! This post saved Jebediah's life today :-D

[klesh]

This used to happen to me, but now I always include one small radial style battery pack on everything.

 Turn off its resource usage in the VAB before flight and it can save you in emergency power situations like this. That spare 100⚡️ buys you all the time you need to re-open your pannels. 

[Nich]

Alt f12 should have infinate electricity option

[GluttonyReaper]

2 hours ago, klesh said:

Turn off its resource usage in the VAB before flight and it can save you in emergency power situations like this. That spare 100⚡️ buys you all the time you need to re-open your pannels. 

This isn't *quite* as useful as it used to be, because you can't re-enable resource usage when you're out of power anymore...

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Nich said:

Alt f12 should have infinate electricity option

It almost does. If you turn on infinite fuel and have any ec on your ship, you get infinite electricity. If you have none, though, it still won't work.

If I may throw in a suggestion, HyperEdit is an easier way to do this than persistent file editing. There's a button to modify your ship, and one of the sliders there is for electric charge.

[klesh]

18 hours ago, GluttonyReaper said:

This isn't *quite* as useful as it used to be, because you can't re-enable resource usage when you're out of power anymore...

Ugh, I hadnt noticed that yet.   

[emerald]

AmpYear helps in such cases, it has reserve power, shows a message, stops time warp and can pop up a warning window to notify you of your running out of EC.

[Rhomphaia]

22 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

It almost does. If you turn on infinite fuel and have any ec on your ship, you get infinite electricity. If you have none, though, it still won't work.

If I may throw in a suggestion, HyperEdit is an easier way to do this than persistent file editing. There's a button to modify your ship, and one of the sliders there is for electric charge.

1.1 splits the old "infinite fuel" into two. Infinite Propellant and Infinite Electricity.

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Rhomphaia said:

1.1 splits the old "infinite fuel" into two. Infinite Propellant and Infinite Electricity.

Oh cool. Does that work with 0 ec, to let stuff keep running? I noticed Infinite Fuel worked now when you had 0 fuel, but that was back in 1.0.5 I think.

[E3FxGaming]

12 hours ago, Rhomphaia said:

1.1 splits the old "infinite fuel" into two. Infinite Propellant and Infinite Electricity.

I think it actually went a step back, because there is no infinite fuel and a seperate option for infinite RCS anymore. Can't remember if infinite electicity was included in infinite fuel.

[Stoney3K]

14 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Oh cool. Does that work with 0 ec, to let stuff keep running? I noticed Infinite Fuel worked now when you had 0 fuel, but that was back in 1.0.5 I think.

I had a manned craft which was re-entering nose first into certain death because it had zero EC left, and I could re-enable the torque wheels with the ALT+F12 cheat, flipping my heat-shielded ass into the wind.

Whether that allows you to regain control of a dead probe, I can't tell.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Stoney3K

[klesh]

On April 24, 2016 at 2:38 PM, GluttonyReaper said:

This isn't *quite* as useful as it used to be, because you can't re-enable resource usage when you're out of power anymore...

 

Good show, sir.  I gave this ol' method a try and sure enough, it no longer works.