[WIP] Nert's Dev Thread - Current: various updates

[Nertea]

There's the correlation then. You, Jasmir and Wildlynx seem to all have that when using FAR. Lynx says is a stock bug that is amplified somehow (I believe this as I have def. seen randomly overheating parts with stock on vessel load). If so, I can try to work around it once I get more information. Will probably ask ferram if he has any clues. 

[Starbuckminsterfullerton]

On 1/30/2016 at 10:44 AM, Nertea said:

Yeah these are probably planned. More RCS blocks at least. However, due to an abundance of RL stuff, my time for KSP is quite limited at the moment (my low post rate probably clues into this).

Anyways I'm also working on NTR support for NFE. The concept is as such: core temp controls ISP. You have to heat up the core before you start your burn. When the engine is on, the flow rate of your engine controls heat dissipated. You could add radiators to keep the core hot while not burning, or time the start of your burn so your reactor gets to Max heat when you are ready to burn.

The reactors will use a lot more uranium too, so keeping then on at full power all the time will be problematic. However, keeping them on at low power for the trimodal engines should easily be possible.

Sounds cool, NTR's are a little too simple now and I always like RCS blocks. 

Some of the Kerbal Atomics engines have built in radiators, would those be enough to keep the reactor 'idling' at propulsion temperature, or would even more be needed? Obviously the ones that don't have any by default will need some. 

[Nertea]

8 minutes ago, Starbuckminsterfullerton said:

Sounds cool, NTR's are a little too simple now and I always like RCS blocks. 

Some of the Kerbal Atomics engines have built in radiators, would those be enough to keep the reactor 'idling' at propulsion temperature, or would even more be needed? Obviously the ones that don't have any by default will need some. 

Not quite. The ones with built in radiators have power generation capabilities. The radiators will be calibrated to keep things running such that the reactor won't overheat when running at the max of generator level, but as this is usually <10% of thrust level, it wouldn't do so for full power

[Psycho_zs]

FYI, regarding RCS: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129521-wip-rcs-size-variants-and-new-options/&do=findComment&comment=2391648

[Gkirmathal]

@Nertea I've updated to 1.0.5 and engines heat animation now works

I still have one question regarding them though, is the heat animation suppose to look like this? As in the whole engine model + adapter being mapped? This inherent to 1.0.5 heat system & animations or because of it still being a WIP?

This is 1.0.4 btw, difference is clear.

 

The models still make my jaw drop every time I design a ship with them

 

edit off topic:

Oke, I checked several ntr mods I had installed and all show the same red model glow, besides the models heatmap, at high temp. Thus it's inherent to 1.0.5.

Is this a ksp setting, overlay of sorts that can be disabled? I find it rather immersion breaking to say the least.

 

Edited February 4, 2016 by Gkirmathal
typo's

[Nertea]

Yes, it's the blackbody glow, a good system for things without thermal animations, but poor for nice, handcrafted ones. I know of no way to disable it. 

[Gkirmathal]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

Yes, it's the blackbody glow, a good system for things without thermal animations, but poor for nice, handcrafted ones. I know of no way to disable it. 

Ah thanks, that explains.

<snip> intermittent solution found see below <snip>

@Nertea I posted this issue on the Dev & suggestion section and 'hoojiwana' came up with an intermittent solution. The blackbody glow shader is controlled in Physics.cfg by the following variables:

blackBodyRadiationMin = 798 // Temperature at which a part's thermal radiation becomes visibile
blackBodyRadiationMax = 7000 // Temperature at which the black body radiation gradient ends

Tested with setting the min to 2750, it works very well. Only con is that it is for all parts.

Could this be possibly be controlled with a custom plugin, to be able to set it on a per part basis?

Edited February 5, 2016 by Gkirmathal

[Bomoo]

Hey, dude. Just wanna thank you for all your work. Feels like a piece or two from your various mods ends up sneaking into most my of my craft these days, some more than others.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/311116532572848345/4CDBD5DADC9E5F57A2D4943D6A3358C52B489726/

[Windspren]

When are you going to remake the nuclear reactor models? I'm hoping it will be before 1.1.

[Nertea]

Prerelease for Mark IV Spaceplane System 2.2.0

• KSP 1.1.2 update
• Upgraded bundled ModuleManager to 2.6.25
• Upgraded bundled Firespitter to experimental version
• Switched from BDAnimationModules to DeployableEngines for all engine animation functionality
• Switched from IFS to B9PartSwitch for all model/part switching functionality
• Added IVA blocking meshes for both Mk4 cockpits and the crew cabin
• Added sound loops for turboprops
• Added USI Life Support compatibility patch
• Added HVR-ONE, HVR-TWO, HVR-THREE heavy lift fans
• Added Mk4 'Skate' Tailpiece
• Added ARV-50-2 Heavy Symmetric RCS Blister
• Added Mk2A 100X Aviation Fuel Tank
• Tweaked CUTLASS and BROADSWORD engine FX
• Fixed orientation of the surface attach node on the 2.5m precooler and fuel tanks
• Fixed CLS passability for the Thunderhawk cockpit
• Added workaround for Thunderhawk cockpit's integrated docking port and control directions
• Fixed propeller spinners being shown on models in the parts list
• Made a WIP part invisible in the research facility and in search
• Corrected a few inconsistent masses in some parts

This contains an experimental build of Firespitter compiled by myself. I think the changes I made in here will be in the next official build, but this inconsistency is the main reason why this is still in dev and not in release. 

I also appreciate comments on the balance of the lift fans (both airbreathing and electrically driven). 

Known issues:

• Reverse thrust for the propfan and turboprop still isn't working

Edited June 13, 2016 by Nertea

[blowfish]

Excellent work!  Couple of things I noticed:

• On the two larger lift fans, the two discs rotate in the same direction at first, then opposite when they get to the blur disc.
• On the smallest, the upper disc gets to the blur point before the bottom one
• At least to me, the lift fans seem too powerful for their size.  Others will probably disagree though

[Nertea]

12 hours ago, blowfish said:

Excellent work!  Couple of things I noticed:

• On the two larger lift fans, the two discs rotate in the same direction at first, then opposite when they get to the blur disc.
• On the smallest, the upper disc gets to the blur point before the bottom one
• At least to me, the lift fans seem too powerful for their size.  Others will probably disagree though

I'll check the spin directions, probably messed up when I mirrored the blades. Re: balance, yeah comments totally welcome. I basically made a ship that I thought was reasonable and kept tweaking the thrust of the biggest fans until 4 of them could lift it handily, then scaled the TWR of the other fans similarly. It could be too powerful :P. 

[SkyKaptn]

I don't know if this is normal, but there is a lot of drag from the fuselages. Granted, my AoA is 10 deg..

[Kerenatus]

The new fans seems to be central symmetry(of some sort) instead of axial symmetry(which, I believe, is what they should be). 

The price of them is obviously wrong(the ultra heavy one is cheaper than others and the medium one is the most expensive).

The ultra heavy one is 8 times the weight of the other two(?) and the medium one is basically of the same weight as the small one.

[SpaceMouse]

Hmmmm. These lift fans look familiar. Someone's been watching Avatar.

I aproove.

Edited June 15, 2016 by SpaceMouse

[Nertea]

On 6/14/2016 at 2:09 AM, SkyKaptn said:

I don't know if this is normal, but there is a lot of drag from the fuselages. Granted, my AoA is 10 deg..

Not sure really, but it seems like the fuselages in front are ok.

On 6/15/2016 at 6:44 AM, Kerenatus said:

The new fans seems to be central symmetry(of some sort) instead of axial symmetry(which, I believe, is what they should be). 

The price of them is obviously wrong(the ultra heavy one is cheaper than others and the medium one is the most expensive).

The ultra heavy one is 8 times the weight of the other two(?) and the medium one is basically of the same weight as the small one.

Fixified. But I don't know what you mean by central vs axial really, could you illustrate?

On 6/15/2016 at 7:19 AM, SpaceMouse said:

Hmmmm. These lift fans look familiar. Someone's been watching Avatar.

I aproove.

Hey, only one of them is from Avatar

[Streetwind]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

Not sure really, but it seems like the fuselages in front are ok.

Maybe that odd "drag cube too large" bug again...?

[Raptor9]

I hope I'm not about to be "that guy"...

I wanted to check out the MkIV pre-release, installed the mod pack by unpacking directly to the Gamedata directory (I know some assets are shared) as usual, and when I loaded into my save game I got a message at the Space Center screen saying AST "something-or-other" didn't load correctly because part Potatoroid is missing. When I went into the VAB/SPH, no parts were present at all.

Unzipped a fresh install of KSP, unpacked the MkIV pre-release, started KSP, new sandbox save.  No parts.  I tested both 32-bit and 64-bit with the same result, and saved the KSP logfiles from both.  Having said all that, is there a troubleshooting step I missed?  I don't want to just toss this frisbee back at Nertea.

CAVEAT: this is the first parts mod pack I've installed in 1.1, so is there anything that players need to do differently now to use mods?

Edited June 17, 2016 by Raptor9

[blowfish]

3 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

I hope I'm not about to be "that guy"...

I wanted to check out the MkIV pre-release, installed the mod pack by unpacking directly to the Gamedata directory (I know some assets are shared) as usual, and when I loaded into my save game I got a message at the Space Center screen saying AST "something-or-other" didn't load correctly because part Potatoroid is missing. When I went into the VAB/SPH, no parts were present at all.

Unzipped a fresh install of KSP, unpacked the MkIV pre-release, started KSP, new sandbox save.  No parts.  I tested both 32-bit and 64-bit with the same result, and saved the KSP logfiles from both.  Having said all that, is there a troubleshooting step I missed?  I don't want to just toss this frisbee back at Nertea.

CAVEAT: this is the first parts mod pack I've installed in 1.1, so is there anything that players need to do differently now to use mods?

Try installing CRP.  I had a similar issue and it turns out that the lift fans use a resource from it.  Seemed to fix the issue for me.

[Raptor9]

22 minutes ago, blowfish said:

Try installing CRP.  I had a similar issue and it turns out that the lift fans use a resource from it.  Seemed to fix the issue for me.

Yep, that did it. Thanks!

@Nertea Those lift fans! Holy smokes. Not only do they look good, but you made them LF and Elec powered with in-flight switching?  And those toggleable wing sections so they can be easily integrated into an airframe; your previous work has always impressed me, but that's a whole new level. 

Those extra-large liftfans look suspiciously like they were salvaged from a crashed heli-carrier from a certain paramilitary intelligence organization...very nice indeed.

[flx]

@Nertea, thank you for the update. But there is a strange thing with Skate tailpiece. It seems like it is not compatible with FAR and it's lift is always calculated with stock aerodynamics.

[Streetwind]

On 18.6.2016 at 9:14 PM, flx said:

@Nertea, thank you for the update. But there is a strange thing with Skate tailpiece. It seems like it is not compatible with FAR and it's lift is always calculated with stock aerodynamics.

Support for FAR is added by FAR, not other mods. Usually this is done by a set of ModuleManager configs that FAR ships. Those configs detect parts with aerodynamic properties and, if necessary, apply patches.

If a specific part somehow acts as if FAR isn't present, than that likely means that those configs fail to detect it (because it doesn't match the search terms that the config uses).

[Nertea]

On 6/17/2016 at 3:43 PM, Raptor9 said:

I hope I'm not about to be "that guy"...

I wanted to check out the MkIV pre-release, installed the mod pack by unpacking directly to the Gamedata directory (I know some assets are shared) as usual, and when I loaded into my save game I got a message at the Space Center screen saying AST "something-or-other" didn't load correctly because part Potatoroid is missing. When I went into the VAB/SPH, no parts were present at all.

Unzipped a fresh install of KSP, unpacked the MkIV pre-release, started KSP, new sandbox save.  No parts.  I tested both 32-bit and 64-bit with the same result, and saved the KSP logfiles from both.  Having said all that, is there a troubleshooting step I missed?  I don't want to just toss this frisbee back at Nertea.

CAVEAT: this is the first parts mod pack I've installed in 1.1, so is there anything that players need to do differently now to use mods?

Yeah I've got to package CRP I guess. 

On 6/18/2016 at 0:14 PM, flx said:

@Nertea, thank you for the update. But there is a strange thing with Skate tailpiece. It seems like it is not compatible with FAR and it's lift is always calculated with stock aerodynamics.

Forgot to nuke its lifting body with the FAR patch, I'll make sure that's fixed up soon.

[Nertea]

So time to dump a bunch of WIP models for Far Future Technologies (name still in flux, because aside from the cringe-worthy FFT acronym joke for us scientists, it sucks). The goal of this project is to make interesting models of (mainly) possible concept engines that need several additional orders of magnitude of science and engineering advances in order to be built. 

Let's start with the already-shown 'Heinlein' Nuclear Salt Water Rocket - a "continuously detonating" nuclear pulse drive. Resized to 2.5m size class to define another key advantage of this drive - the low size. Runs on Nuclear Salt Water (for which tanks are coming) along and a small amount of electric charge to run the magnetic nozzle. Posts a specific impulse of 6750 s with an engine TWR of around 6.0. Beware of heat though, as the drive power is quite high. This is more or less the endgame drive. 

Texture is coming along, but needs more detail. 

The first of many 3.75m drives is the unnamed antimatter catalyzed microfission pulse drive. A pellet of fissionable material is injected into the nozzle, where it is immediately compressed by a bunch of ion beams. Then a beam of antiprotons hits it, and boom! Small nuclear explosion. The explosion vaporizes part of the ablative nozzle, which is emitted as thrust. 

In ingame terms, it uses a supply of FissionTargets, a small amount of Electric Charge, a tiny amount of Antimatter and a bunch of Ablator. The Ablator can't be refilled, so this is a limited use drive. However, an Isp of 13500 s is nothing to sneeze at, and really only uses a very small amount of antimatter. TWR isn't great though. 

Unwrapped and merely colorized. Based on the ICAN-II concept, but totally redone because it was butt-ugly.

Number three is the antimatter-induced microfusion drive. Another 3.75m model, this drive uses a set of magnetic fields to bring a smallish amount of antiprotons into contact with a small deuterium and tritium charge to force them to undergo fusion. The reaction products are expelled by the magnetic nozzle. This drive uses more antiprotons than the ACMF, but produces a staggeringly high specific impulse of 60,000 s. The TWR is not great though, and because it doesn't use ablation, it can be completely refuelled without a new drive unit. 

Fuels are Deuterium, Tritium, antimatter, and a small amount of ElectricCharge to run the magnets. Also unwrapped and with a basic set of colorization for textures. 

I'll throw in some fusion fuel tanks. These 2.5m models can be swapped between Deuterium (blue), Tritium (gold) and a D/T mix. The models are actually quite old so they might get some texture work before finalization. A 3.75m model is also in the works. 

Also working on the antiproton storage ring. Though not completed yet, it shows the basic outline. The centre ring is 3.75m in diameter, so the shape is quite awkward to work with. It should look ok with both 2.5m and 3.75m cores. The outer ring will be designed with stacking in mind, so you'll be able to toggle the top and bottom section of the octagons in order to stack multiple rings nicely. 

Additional models not shown here that need to be completed for an initial pack are 2.5/3.75m nuclear target storage tanks, a 3.75m multi-fusion-fuel tank, and several nuclear salt water tanks. 

 

Edited July 8, 2016 by Nertea

[Mekan1k]

What about telematter? (Using Quantum Teleportation to transfer antiprotons for a annihilation-powered engine from one location to another? That way, in late endgame, you could have very high thrust high ISP engines that can only function if you are generating enough antiprotons from a near-solar base)