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

[toric5]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

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. 

This isn't just antimatter, but hydrogen, He3, and Deuterium as well. Liquid hydrogen, at least, is generating correctly, and can be sensed at the location of the sensor, as well as gathered, but it does not show at range using the abundance with range graph tool. I also saw nothing with AM, and assumed it was generating but not showing. Didn't check the entire kerbin orbit, though.
 

Edited November 19, 2018 by toric5

[Nertea]

Just now, toric5 said:

This isn't just antimatter, but hydrogen, Heh, and Deuterium as well. Liquid hydrogen, at least, is generating correctly, and can be sensed at the location of the sensor, as well as gathered, but it does not show at range using the abundance with range graph tool. I also saw nothing with AM, and assumed it was generating but not showing. Didn't check the entire kerbin orbit, though.
 

Ah well that gives me a starting point then.

[AmpCat]

7 hours ago, Nertea said:

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

Hm, I guess that does fit. I didn't think that it was the same problem, but now I read it, yep, that's the same problem. Weird thing is I noticed it specific happens when MechJeb cruises to altitude. I couldn't force it myself. But I couldn't quite follow some of the later conversations. I'll try with the update.

Oh, the other reason I didn't think it was the same, is I don't adjust the charge rate. I set it at 1000 in the VAB, and leave it.

Edit: After some testing, it indeed seems fixed! Though, I ended up not needing the fusion reactor anyway.

@Nertea another potential bug/exploit: When using the JR-35B engines, having them powered up, and activated, but not producing thrust,;I'm getting power from the engine as it should, but it's not producing any heat from what I can tell. Is this intended? I figured I'd need to maintain radiators for this passive reactor feature.

Edited November 20, 2018 by AmpCat

[Nertea]

18 hours ago, AmpCat said:

Hm, I guess that does fit. I didn't think that it was the same problem, but now I read it, yep, that's the same problem. Weird thing is I noticed it specific happens when MechJeb cruises to altitude. I couldn't force it myself. But I couldn't quite follow some of the later conversations. I'll try with the update.

Oh, the other reason I didn't think it was the same, is I don't adjust the charge rate. I set it at 1000 in the VAB, and leave it.

Edit: After some testing, it indeed seems fixed! Though, I ended up not needing the fusion reactor anyway.

@Nertea another potential bug/exploit: When using the JR-35B engines, having them powered up, and activated, but not producing thrust,;I'm getting power from the engine as it should, but it's not producing any heat from what I can tell. Is this intended? I figured I'd need to maintain radiators for this passive reactor feature.

It's intended. If you want to spend all your dollars on fusion fuel that way, you can have some free radiator capacity.

[wafflemoder]

So glad you're working on FFT again. Love how much detail you put into all your mods. Are there any plans on adding variable ISP capabilities to any of the engines like the VASIMR or PIT engines of NFT?

[Nightside]

Thanks for the update Nertea! I've been playing with the Z-pinch rockets and I have a question: Are they missing propellant? I see they consume fusion pellets for fuel but nothing for propellant, such as lithium. Is this intentional or am I (very likely) misunderstanding how this drive system works?

[Tyko]

22 hours ago, Nightside said:

Thanks for the update Nertea! I've been playing with the Z-pinch rockets and I have a question: Are they missing propellant? I see they consume fusion pellets for fuel but nothing for propellant, such as lithium. Is this intentional or am I (very likely) misunderstanding how this drive system works?

There's a Wiki page on z-pinch that explains how the drive works.     From the wiki it looks like Lithium is used, so not sure how this one is different

Edited November 26, 2018 by Tyko

[GrandProtectorDark]

23 hours ago, Nightside said:

 I see they consume fusion pellets for fuel but nothing for propellant, such as lithium. 

The obvious answer is that the Pellets are  the propellant and fuel. Kinda like a tiny little project orion/daedalus but with tiny micro bombs

[toric5]

On 11/19/2018 at 2:14 PM, Nertea said:

Ah well that gives me a starting point then.

Just as a confirmation, I went in and found that the AM bug was extremly simple (somone forgot a .cfg in the filename), and even with the AM properly generating, the long range profiler shows zero across the board.

[Wiowt]

@Nertea

Will you add antimatter reactor, fusion jet and something collectintg He3 from planets without atmospheres?

[Nertea]

On 11/26/2018 at 8:10 PM, toric5 said:

Just as a confirmation, I went in and found that the AM bug was extremly simple (somone forgot a .cfg in the filename), and even with the AM properly generating, the long range profiler shows zero across the board.

The resolution is quite easy, go into the configs and change the scale for the readouts from 100 to 1 (I borked this). 

On 11/25/2018 at 3:53 PM, Nightside said:

Thanks for the update Nertea! I've been playing with the Z-pinch rockets and I have a question: Are they missing propellant? I see they consume fusion pellets for fuel but nothing for propellant, such as lithium. Is this intentional or am I (very likely) misunderstanding how this drive system works?

Pellets include the propellant. If you dig into the papers, the pellet is essentially a lithium coated fuel charge so contains both.

There's really no point in separating this out in terms of gameplay... much easier if you didn't have to keep track of fusionpellets, fusion+li pellets, etc...

On 11/22/2018 at 6:12 PM, wafflemoder said:

So glad you're working on FFT again. Love how much detail you put into all your mods. Are there any plans on adding variable ISP capabilities to any of the engines like the VASIMR or PIT engines of NFT?

None of these engines really work in that paradigm, to "gear" them you would vary the mixing ratio instead. I don't really intend to do this beyond a select few engines (the plasma core AM and the metallic H2 engine).

3 hours ago, Wiowt said:

@Nertea

Will you add antimatter reactor, fusion jet and something collectintg He3 from planets without atmospheres?

None of these are planned, soory. 

[Gryphorim]

A couple of suggestions/requests: 

The really big, 10m hydrogen tank sphere.

1. Can it please get configs for fusion fuels, or can a fusion fuel variant in this size be made? Similarly, can a version of this tank be made that can store electric engine fuels like Argon?

2. Is it possible to have this tank collapse down for transport, fitting in a 5m or 7.5m fairing?

Antimatter containment tankage.

The ring is awesome, but really limited on fuel, while the larger, traditional tanks are only in one size. Could we maybe get some half-length traditional tanks, and/or ring storage in larger sizes?

 

EDIT: Adding to my last...

Would it be feasible to add a sort of far future Aeronautics?

Potential ideas being a pure electric jet engine  or thermal jet engine that uses reactor heating to heat intake air, acting as a radiator while doing so? I imagine such a system would have it's cooling effect coupled to thermal output of reactor, determining thrust, or alternatively, have cooling determined by available thrust. A similar idea could apply to SABRE-style combined cycle engines, at least while in air-breathing mode. Compared to a NTR, such a system would likely be heavier as thermal transfer hardware would add weight, but there might be real payoffs if run on a fusion power source.

Going a step further, would antimatter injection at the combustion stage yield significant thrust? ISP of such a high thrust engine would likely be poor if using onboard remass, but if it were airbreathing?

For this to be implemented, I imagine the addition of electric and thermal jet engines at the usual sizes, as well as SABRE equivalents. In addition, there would probably need to be a variant of the standard nuclear reactors that have aerodynamic fairings over them, for incorporation into aircraft fuselages. These could hypothetically be an extension of the mounting options present in existing reactors. 

Slightly off-topic, but I'd like to see some Mk2 form factor engines in the NF Aero pack. OPT used to have a sweet looking Mk2 engine, like a linear aerospike SABRE, but it was wildly OP and no longer in the pack, from what I can tell. It'd be nice to see a NF Mk2 SABRE and maybe a turbojet, like the F22 inspired one in the Aero pack already (I think), and of course, the electric and thermal ideas as seen above.

 

Of course, with Restock on the books as well now, I can see all of this being low-priority. Though aero parts should be simpler than the open trusswork of space parts, at least from a modelling perspective.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Gryphorim
adding further suggestions

[toric5]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

The resolution is quite easy, go into the configs and change the scale for the readouts from 100 to 1 (I borked this).

Does your code use resource abundance ranging from 1 to 0, or from 100 to 0? I have found that a value of .2 works well for antimatter, but for the other resources, the abundances vary so wildly that in order to make a resource even visible on a low abundance planet, the resource will, max out the graph and not really give you an idea of where it is most abundant, only telling you that its there, and there's more than trace amounts of it. Maybe a log scale would fix this? Or making the y scaling adjustable in game, similar to how the x, or distance range

couple of side notes:

The ALICE spectrometers model makes it non obvious what the direction it scans along is. I thought it was the square lens that points alongside the vessel for quite a while. (the z map particle detector has similar issues.)
The current orientation of these transforms also makes craft design that can use these to pinpoint resources rather difficult, as you usually would want to scan in line with your direction of control, so you can use the navball to assist you, but with the current transforms, you would have to place these on a flat surface on top of your ship to do that (very limited real estate compared to radial mounts, and awkward placement for surface attachment). Maybe adding a control from here option would be the simplest way to fix this.

Finally, I don't know if it is you or Freethinker that curates these set of resources in the CRP, but jool exo liquidhydrogen has a max altitude and min altitude both equal to .1, making them effectively nonexistent.

Edited November 30, 2018 by toric5

[Nightside]

20 hours ago, Nertea said:

Pellets include the propellant. If you dig into the papers, the pellet is essentially a lithium coated fuel charge so contains both.

There's really no point in separating this out in terms of gameplay... much easier if you didn't have to keep track of fusionpellets, fusion+li pellets, etc..

Thanks, that makes sense, I think I was expecting to need to use larger tanks for those engines. I may patch the fusion pellets into a larger tank for aesthetic purposes.

If anyone is curious, this is what fusion pellets look like:

Spoiler

 

[Nertea]

19 hours ago, Gryphorim said:

 The ring is awesome, but really limited on fuel, while the larger, traditional tanks are only in one size. Could we maybe get some half-length traditional tanks, and/or ring storage in larger sizes?

 

There will be a 3.75m antimatter tank but not really anything else. The ring works fine for use with the catalyzed engines and the other two are for larger things. 

19 hours ago, Gryphorim said:

Would it be feasible to add a sort of far future Aeronautics?

Potential ideas being a pure electric jet engine  or thermal jet engine that uses reactor heating to heat intake air, acting as a radiator while doing so? I imagine such a system would have it's cooling effect coupled to thermal output of reactor, determining thrust, or alternatively, have cooling determined by available thrust. A similar idea could apply to SABRE-style combined cycle engines, at least while in air-breathing mode. Compared to a NTR, such a system would likely be heavier as thermal transfer hardware would add weight, but there might be real payoffs if run on a fusion power source.

Going a step further, would antimatter injection at the combustion stage yield significant thrust? ISP of such a high thrust engine would likely be poor if using onboard remass, but if it were airbreathing?

For this to be implemented, I imagine the addition of electric and thermal jet engines at the usual sizes, as well as SABRE equivalents. In addition, there would probably need to be a variant of the standard nuclear reactors that have aerodynamic fairings over them, for incorporation into aircraft fuselages. These could hypothetically be an extension of the mounting options present in existing reactors. 

Slightly off-topic, but I'd like to see some Mk2 form factor engines in the NF Aero pack. OPT used to have a sweet looking Mk2 engine, like a linear aerospike SABRE, but it was wildly OP and no longer in the pack, from what I can tell. It'd be nice to see a NF Mk2 SABRE and maybe a turbojet, like the F22 inspired one in the Aero pack already (I think), and of course, the electric and thermal ideas as seen above.

 

I mean, depends on how much you want to pay for all this content...

12 hours ago, toric5 said:

Finally, I don't know if it is you or Freethinker that curates these set of resources in the CRP, but jool exo liquidhydrogen has a max altitude and min altitude both equal to .1, making them effectively nonexistent.

If I understood the resource distribution lecture roverdude gave correctly, that just means that the band will be located at .1 (no randomness between two values) so it extends linearly out from the planet. 

12 hours ago, toric5 said:

Does your code use resource abundance ranging from 1 to 0, or from 100 to 0? I have found that a value of .2 works well for antimatter, but for the other resources, the abundances vary so wildly that in order to make a resource even visible on a low abundance planet, the resource will, max out the graph and not really give you an idea of where it is most abundant, only telling you that its there, and there's more than trace amounts of it. Maybe a log scale would fix this? Or making the y scaling adjustable in game, similar to how the x, or distance range

 

Nope it scales the bar to the maximum distribution. So it should always be at one. This whole bit needs work, it's just low priority right now. I am working on redoing most of the AM engine ART and stuff. Resource thing rework will be next.

12 hours ago, toric5 said:

The current orientation of these transforms also makes craft design that can use these to pinpoint resources rather difficult, as you usually would want to scan in line with your direction of control, so you can use the navball to assist you, but with the current transforms, you would have to place these on a flat surface on top of your ship to do that (very limited real estate compared to radial mounts, and awkward placement for surface attachment). Maybe adding a control from here option would be the simplest way to fix this.

 

Also possibly intended to encourage smaller, maneuverable probes!

[toric5]

On 11/30/2018 at 1:51 PM, Nertea said:

Nope it scales the bar to the maximum distribution. So it should always be at one. This whole bit needs work, it's just low priority right now. I am working on redoing most of the AM engine ART and stuff. Resource thing rework will be next.

sounds good. the whole autoscaling thig seems to be a tad off, unless it scales to the max amount present in the universe,  whitch leads to a lot of problems. Good to know that its somewhere on the todo list.

On 11/30/2018 at 1:51 PM, Nertea said:

Also possibly intended to encourage smaller, maneuverable probes!

the problem isnt so mutch probe manuverablity, its more that if it had a 'controll from here' option allows you to use your navball and 'point at target' sas option in order to get an accurate idea of the altitude of resource bands. (unless you mean that they are intended to be placed on a flat surface on top of the probe...)

My point about the models being ambiguous about whitch protrusion is the camera lens still stands though. The spectrometer has the square opening facing alongside the craft, and the round opening facing outwards. The particle detector has the big round dome at the top, and the tiny round protrusion on the side that looks like it could be a camara lens. (dont get me wrong, the models are quite nice, just ambiguous.)

[Nertea]

Well fine I'll redo the models then

[FreeThinker]

@Nertea Question, how can the NTS-002 Nuclear Salt Water Tank (which has a diameter of 2.5m and about 2.5m high) contain 16000 Liter of NSW ? At those dimensions, at best it can contain pi * r^2 * h = pi * 1.25m^2 * 2.5m = 12 cubic meter = 12000 Liter. But considering it consist of 4 cylinders storage capacity it effective storage capacity would be reduced by at least 50%, reducing maximum capacity to 6000 Liter, which is 62.5% less than 16000 Liter

Edited December 10, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Gryphorim]

I don't suppose some parts to make this:

Could be in the next update of NF Spacecraft? Some hummingbird cowlings (Perhaps with monoprop in them to take advantage of the extra volume) and a symmetrical clamshell fairing? I tried using a mk3 loading ramp, but you lose about half the volume and it frankly looks ridiculous. The N-Series in NF Boosters has the cool flip-top, but is too big for many launches.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Gryphorim

[Wiowt]

@Nertea

Will you add something like warp drive?

Edited December 10, 2018 by Wiowt

[Xurkitree]

STAHP GIving such amazing mods

I'm totally psyched that this would get a release one day.

Keep at it!

[Nertea]

15 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

@Nertea Question, how can the NTS-002 Nuclear Salt Water Tank (which has a diameter of 2.5m and about 2.5m high) contain 16000 Liter of NSW ? At those dimensions, at best it can contain pi * r^2 * h = pi * 1.25m^2 * 2.5m = 12 cubic meter = 12000 Liter. But considering it consist of 4 cylinders storage capacity it effective storage capacity would be reduced by at least 50%, reducing maximum capacity to 6000 Liter, which is 62.5% less than 16000 Liter

I don't have the numbers in front of me so there might be an issue, it should have the same volume as an LF tank of equivalent size (J64 size should have 32k units). I'll check it at some point. I do not model pressure vessel sizes in tank volume calculation, only the envelope, it's way more player transparent.

3 hours ago, Gryphorim said:

I don't suppose some parts to make this:

Could be in the next update of NF Spacecraft? Some hummingbird cowlings (Perhaps with monoprop in them to take advantage of the extra volume) and a symmetrical clamshell fairing? I tried using a mk3 loading ramp, but you lose about half the volume and it frankly looks ridiculous. The N-Series in NF Boosters has the cool flip-top, but is too big for many launches.

NF spacecraft is done and will not receive more content beyond fixes.

1 hour ago, Wiowt said:

@Nertea

Will you add something like warp drive?

Not as part of this mod.

[MaximumThrust]

@Gryphorim

You can use a MM tweakscale patch to adjust the size of NF-LV, and use that nice looking flip-top in many sizes. Here what's I'm using, includes patches for many NF parts.
 

Spoiler

@PART[cargo-5-*,cargo-nose-5-1,service-bay-5-1,decoupler-5-1]:NEEDS[TweakScale]:FINAL
{
    %MODULE[TweakScale]
    {
        %name = TweakScale
        %type = stack
        %defaultScale = 5.0
    }
}

@PART[fueltank-5-*,fueltank-adapter-5-*,fueltank-nosecone-5-1,skeletal-adapter-5-1,cluster-mount-5-*,hydrogen-5-*]:NEEDS[TweakScale]:FINAL
{
    %MODULE[TweakScale]
    {
        %name = TweakScale
        %type = stack
        %defaultScale = 5.0
    }
}

@PART[fueltank-75-*,fueltank-adapter-75-5-*,cluster-mount-75-*,decoupler-75-1]:NEEDS[TweakScale]:FINAL
{
    %MODULE[TweakScale]
    {
        %name = TweakScale
        %type = stack
        %defaultScale = 7.5
    }
}

@PART[decoupler-radial-1,solarpanel-blanket-3,solarpanel-blanket-4,rcs-heavy-1way-1,rcs-aero-heavy-*,solarpanel-deploying-1x3-2,rcs-heavy-4way-1,rcs-integrated-*]:NEEDS[TweakScale]:FINAL
{
    %MODULE[TweakScale]
    {
        %name = TweakScale
        %type = type = free
    }
}

 

[bartekkru99]

On 12/10/2018 at 5:30 PM, Nertea said:

Not as part of this mod.

I'd love to have an alternative for KSPI's warp drives.

[helaeon]

5 hours ago, bartekkru99 said:

I'd love to have an alternative for KSPI's warp drives.

The USI warp drive works pretty well... I may have had a hand in making it though so filter that as you may.