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

[Swordmaster]

I seem to be having an issue with the 3.75m fusion reactor. I'll start it up, it will run fine, and then after using a particular amount of fuel (in both D-D & D-He3 fuel modes), it suddenly says it's out of fuel and shuts down, despite the fusion fuel tank attached directly to it having 99% fuel remaining. I know I have sufficient cooling (even though that isn't the issue), with the 4K Graphene radiators. I'm honestly stumped as to what might be causing it.
Scene change seems to clear it temporarily, however after some undetermined duration it says it's out of fuel and shuts down. Restarting the reactor doesn't fix it. Whatever is causing it, it's not something that is being caught in the KSP log file. SIde note, the reactor keeps defaulting to D-D fuel mode, even after changing to D-He3 fuel mode & saving in editor.
TL;DR, fusion reactor shutting down b/c lack of fuel despite plenty of fuel, scene change only temp fixes, issue not coming up as ERR, WRN, or LOG event in KSP log file. 

[Nertea]

19 hours ago, Swordmaster said:

I seem to be having an issue with the 3.75m fusion reactor. I'll start it up, it will run fine, and then after using a particular amount of fuel (in both D-D & D-He3 fuel modes), it suddenly says it's out of fuel and shuts down, despite the fusion fuel tank attached directly to it having 99% fuel remaining. I know I have sufficient cooling (even though that isn't the issue), with the 4K Graphene radiators. I'm honestly stumped as to what might be causing it.
Scene change seems to clear it temporarily, however after some undetermined duration it says it's out of fuel and shuts down. Restarting the reactor doesn't fix it. Whatever is causing it, it's not something that is being caught in the KSP log file. SIde note, the reactor keeps defaulting to D-D fuel mode, even after changing to D-He3 fuel mode & saving in editor.
TL;DR, fusion reactor shutting down b/c lack of fuel despite plenty of fuel, scene change only temp fixes, issue not coming up as ERR, WRN, or LOG event in KSP log file. 

I need specific reproduction steps. I did the following:

• Built vessel with command pod, 4x large 2.5m batteries, large 2.5m D tank, 2.5m reactor, 6x large TCS
• Launched vessel, activated reactor and radiators
• Timewarped, went back to space center, turned tank cooling off, etc, tried to break it

Rock solid all the way through. 

(I did find the bug where the fusion mode was not being saved though)

[Swordmaster]

Replicated the exact testing parameters as you stated above, with the exact size pod, reactor, etc. No issue, and this is with a heavily-modded game. Testing the 3.75m reactor now. Will update reply with results. 

Edit 1: So far it's operating fine, using 4x NFE 10k batteries, 4x 4K Graphene radiators, 3.75m Deutrium fuel tank, and 3.75m fusion reactor. It is however generating a significant amount of excess heat. During max timewarp the command pod reached sufficient heat to have the gauges pop up, ultimately to about 75% of max heat, however that was as high as it reached. On resuming normal time, that excess heat immediately went into the radiators, which read at 99.88% Cooling, and also had a part temp of approx. 75% of max. Ultimately no random shutdown, next step is to look at vessel that issue occurred on and determine what part(s) or mods may have tripped something./

Edit 2: @Nertea Tested original craft, reacted same as the 3.75m test craft (no issue other than heating). However, I had mechjeb execute a Hohmann transfter to the Mun. Right before it finished the burn, I deployed two OKEB-75 Blanket Photovoltaic Arrays. One of those tripped the "out of fuel, shutting down" issue. going to see if the solar panel deployment was the issue first. Possibly important detail, the out of fuel message popped up about the moment the solar panels finished deploying, rather than the moment deployment was initiated.

Edit 3: Testing it one more time to be certain, but it looks like the trigger is having the solar panels deployed, and throttling up the engines. The engines in question are two Colossus MPD engines. Passive power generation from thermoelectric generators do not seem to be an issue. 

Edit 4: It appears it's the throttling up of EC-dependent engines that throws it, not anything related to solar panels.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Swordmaster

[Swordmaster]

In summary, the "out of fuel, shutting down" issue is being caused by throttling up an engine that requires EC. Further testing determined there is a threshold at which these engines are tripping the issue, approximately 200-300 Ec/s power draw. This was tested with the same craft as specified by Nertea in the initial reply. Next steps would be to test with purely FFT & stock parts (as initial testing involved fuel tanks & engines from NF Propulsion), and from there clearing game down to FFT & dependencies and pure stock.

Edit: Just tried adding a Stardust engine, as long as you set the recharge below 200 Ec/s, or at max charge (1,000 Ec/s), it doesn't trip the error. If you fiddle with the recharge slider, you can induce the error. It's looking like power consumption exactly at the 200-250 Ec/s mark will trip it, but it has to hit or pass through that number, starting the rate above that number doesn't trip it.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Swordmaster

[Nertea]

39 minutes ago, Swordmaster said:

In summary, the "out of fuel, shutting down" issue is being caused by throttling up an engine that requires EC. Further testing determined there is a threshold at which these engines are tripping the issue, approximately 200-300 Ec/s power draw. This was tested with the same craft as specified by Nertea in the initial reply. Next steps would be to test with purely FFT & stock parts (as initial testing involved fuel tanks & engines from NF Propulsion), and from there clearing game down to FFT & dependencies and pure stock.

Edit: Just tried adding a Stardust engine, as long as you set the recharge below 200 Ec/s, or at max charge (1,000 Ec/s), it doesn't trip the error. If you fiddle with the recharge slider, you can induce the error. It's looking like power consumption exactly at the 200-250 Ec/s mark will trip it, but it has to hit or pass through that number, starting the rate above that number doesn't trip it.

what the effffff

[Swordmaster]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

what the effffff

Sorry, in hindsight my edits were very stream-of-consciousness. Basically if using an engine/thruster, usually a Near Future Propulsion thruster that draws power as part of its function, that reaches at least 200 electric charge per second power draw....that seems to trip something with the fusion reactor that causes it the act as though it ran out of fuel. Any other engine/thruster does not cause this. Additionally, while testing the K-49 'Stardust' Ablative Inertial Confinement Fusion Engine from the Far Future Technology mod, if you set the rate of charging for that engine to around 200 electric charge per second, it would cause the same thing. The weird thing was if you set the rate of charge to max, it wouldn't cause the issue.

hope that makes more sense, and apologies for that mess of a reply

Edited November 15, 2018 by Swordmaster
clarity/grammar

[Nertea]

Oh no I just mean I have no clue what's going on with that! You were pretty clear and the repro steps are good so I'll try to dig into it soon.

[Swordmaster]

3 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Oh no I just mean I have no clue what's going on with that! You were pretty clear and the repro steps are good so I'll try to dig into it soon.

That's a relief! Let me know if there's anything I can do on my end to help. I think I mentioned before that I run a heavily modded setup, so I'll probably take a swing at it down to bare-bones like I mentioned tomorrow, just to make sure there isn't some obscure thing going in in the background.

[Nertea]

Soooo I can't reproduce it in that mode either  . I built the same ship, but added an chargeable engine and tried scrubbing the charge rate bar so that it went through 200 Ec/s. No luck. But I've been tinkering with the plugin since the last release - it's possible I fixed something accidentally. Can I ask if you can replace the dll from here: https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/FarFutureTechnologies/tree/dev/GameData/FarFutureTechnologies/Plugins and see if you can still reproduce it (It's the most current one to my dev install)

[Asmosdeus]

Yeah I have the same issue with the Heinlein NSW engine having a 2 dimensional exhaust.

I always just assumed it was an incompatibility with 1.4-1.5.

[Swordmaster]

11 hours ago, Nertea said:

Soooo I can't reproduce it in that mode either  . I built the same ship, but added an chargeable engine and tried scrubbing the charge rate bar so that it went through 200 Ec/s. No luck. But I've been tinkering with the plugin since the last release - it's possible I fixed something accidentally. Can I ask if you can replace the dll from here: https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/FarFutureTechnologies/tree/dev/GameData/FarFutureTechnologies/Plugins and see if you can still reproduce it (It's the most current one to my dev install)

Just tested barebones, did get it to trip with that Stardust engine charging. I'll pull the updated plugin now, let you know if it fixes things.
I think I also have an unrelated bug pop up with the antimatter factory not showing up, but it could be because the barebones test is in a brand new save game, and I don't recall if I loaded FFT into an in-progress game or not.

 

4 minutes ago, Asmosdeus said:

Yeah I have the same issue with the Heinlein NSW engine having a 2 dimensional exhaust.

I always just assumed it was an incompatibility with 1.4-1.5.

Different issue friend, got a weird bug with the fusion reactor, probably not related to what you're talking about. See previous replies.

[Asmosdeus]

Just now, Swordmaster said:

Different issue friend, got a weird bug with the fusion reactor, probably not related to what you're talking about. See previous replies.

Sorry I was referring to a bug posted on the previous page.

[Swordmaster]

29 minutes ago, Asmosdeus said:

Sorry I was referring to a bug posted on the previous page.

You're good, I figured that's what you were talking about.

@Nertea Tentatively calling it fixed with the new .dll, can't get it to trip while charging the engine. Going to load it into the full modded set and test to be sure, but I'm thinking it's good now.
Edit: So far so good. Will update if something does pop up, but I think it's good now. Thanks for all you do!

Edited November 15, 2018 by Swordmaster

[Nertea]

3 hours ago, Swordmaster said:

@Nertea Tentatively calling it fixed with the new .dll, can't get it to trip while charging the engine. Going to load it into the full modded set and test to be sure, but I'm thinking it's good now.
 Edit: So far so good. Will update if something does pop up, but I think it's good now. Thanks for all you do!

Great to hear! I changed some things to address a larger bug and I'm glad it worked out.

 

 

[Swordmaster]

2 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Great to hear! I changed some things to address a larger bug and I'm glad it worked out.

 

 

Yep, still working great. Able to start the mission I was prepping for. it's a huge vessel using a mix of FFT, NFT, & Stockalike Station Parts. I'd like to show it off, if there's a good place to link the album.

[toric5]

It seems that the antimatter detector and the imaging spectrometer always return zero when doing the ranged scan. I can even manually hunt for kerbins antimatter belt (through the resources here display), and take a profile, and it is zero at every range. Tried with both the release .dll and the dev one you provided to someone else.

[Nertea]

12 hours ago, toric5 said:

It seems that the antimatter detector and the imaging spectrometer always return zero when doing the ranged scan. I can even manually hunt for kerbins antimatter belt (through the resources here display), and take a profile, and it is zero at every range. Tried with both the release .dll and the dev one you provided to someone else.

Did you start a new game since the CRP update?

[toric5]

 

8 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Did you start a new game since the CRP update?

Brand new save for 1.5.1

[Nertea]

Well I guess I'll look into it. Exo resource system is garbage though, hard to debug. 

[toric5]

Just now, Nertea said:

Well I guess I'll look into it. Exo resource system is garbage though, hard to debug. 

 I should emphasize, the resources are there, but the scanners arent showing them at range.

[bartekkru99]

NFT's development is being resumed?! Oh my... looks like christmas is early thi year! You're simply amazing Nert, I still can't figure out how you can manage so many great mods at the same time.

[AmpCat]

@NerteaI'm trying a new ship using the FX-3 Fusion Reactor, and I'm running into a weird problem with MechJeb. The ship is using some of @JadeOfMaar's aerospike engines (which use lots of electricity), and I decided to experiment with using a fusion power plant on a ship. The ship also has 3 JR-38B Tokamak engines, but those are deactivated when this occurs. Basically, when I turn the reactor on on the launch pad and take off with MechJeb's ascent guidance, and everything seems fine. However, when the ship gets enough velocity to meet the apoapse set, MechJeb cuts the engines and coasts to a circularization burn. However, for some reason, it just flat out kills the FX-3. It complains it's out of fuel. There's plenty of fuel on board. But it reads that fuel, thermal, power, everything is offline. It starts recharging the cap (with max charge rate), and once I hit start again, it gives me the out of fuel error. If I don't use the ascent guidance, it doesn't seem to happen, but I've not tried a lot of other maneuvers yet.

Tried a simpler rocket, with just those electric aerospikes and the fusion engine. Once again, once MechJeb switches to coast phase of the launch, it just kills the engine. I've not figured out a way to get the engine to run again, without loading a save or resetting the launch.

Edited November 19, 2018 by AmpCat

[Nertea]

4 hours ago, AmpCat said:

@NerteaI'm trying a new ship using the FX-3 Fusion Reactor, and I'm running into a weird problem with MechJeb. The ship is using some of @JadeOfMaar's aerospike engines (which use lots of electricity), and I decided to experiment with using a fusion power plant on a ship. The ship also has 3 JR-38B Tokamak engines, but those are deactivated when this occurs. Basically, when I turn the reactor on on the launch pad and take off with MechJeb's ascent guidance, and everything seems fine. However, when the ship gets enough velocity to meet the apoapse set, MechJeb cuts the engines and coasts to a circularization burn. However, for some reason, it just flat out kills the FX-3. It complains it's out of fuel. There's plenty of fuel on board. But it reads that fuel, thermal, power, everything is offline. It starts recharging the cap (with max charge rate), and once I hit start again, it gives me the out of fuel error. If I don't use the ascent guidance, it doesn't seem to happen, but I've not tried a lot of other maneuvers yet.

Tried a simpler rocket, with just those electric aerospikes and the fusion engine. Once again, once MechJeb switches to coast phase of the launch, it just kills the engine. I've not figured out a way to get the engine to run again, without loading a save or resetting the launch.

Look up in the thread for an identical issue and its resolution. 

On 11/16/2018 at 12:31 PM, toric5 said:

 I should emphasize, the resources are there, but the scanners arent showing them at range.

So this would be odd because the new version of CRP has a bug which prevents AM distributions from generating at all! Did you fix it yourself or something? I can't even get them to work at all. 

[Wiowt]

@Nertea

Don't you think about fusion jet?

[Nertea]

New testing release, 0.3.1. Mostly dedicated to locking off the art for the NSWR and FFRE. Antimatter parts will be next. 

• Updated B9PartSwitch to 2.4.5
• Removed MiniAVC from distribution
• Updated CryoTanks to 1.0.3
• Increased thrust of NSWR to 960 from 520 kN, decreased Isp to from 5650 to 3650
• New engine effects for NSWR and FFRE
• Separated thermal and engine throttle effects for NSWR and FFRE
• Updated textures for NSWR, NSW tanks and FFRE
• Fixed fusion reactor fuel mode not being saved between scenes
• Fixed an issue with fusion reactor fuel consumption

@Wiowt I think about, but I do not make :P.  

@toric5  Still looking into the AM fix, so don't expect it to be resolved here