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

[theJesuit]

1 hour ago, WarriorSabe said:

Infinite? Are they really that unbalanced? I thought it was just a like sevenfold multiplier or something

Asni understand it - you have the MPL in orbit somewhere - say Minmus.  Send a craft down with a goo/ material bay.  Hit a bit biome and return to orbit and dock with the MPL to have it process the data on those experiements.  Once the data is all analysed you send the experients down again, redo them at the same biomes and return again to the orbiting MPL.  Rinse, repeat forever as long as you never return those particular specific experiements to kerbin or transmit them back.

[WarriorSabe]

3 minutes ago, theJesuit said:

Asni understand it - you have the MPL in orbit somewhere - say Minmus.  Send a craft down with a goo/ material bay.  Hit a bit biome and return to orbit and dock with the MPL to have it process the data on those experiements.  Once the data is all analysed you send the experients down again, redo them at the same biomes and return again to the orbiting MPL.  Rinse, repeat forever as long as you never return those particular specific experiements to kerbin or transmit them back.

Wow, that really is quite broken. I'm glad I've got Kerbalism science for that

[sturmhauke]

2 hours ago, WarriorSabe said:

Infinite? Are they really that unbalanced? I thought it was just a like sevenfold multiplier or something

Collecting science normally has diminishing returns, but when you process it on a lab it retains its full science value, multiplied by the lab factor (base is 5x with modifiers depending on where the lab is relative to the experiment origin, and the scientists on the lab). Each lab can only run an experiment from a specific situation once (e.g. a surface sample from Mun Polar Crater), but a couple of labs in LKO is plenty to unlock the entire tech tree.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

On 8/8/2020 at 11:10 AM, Nertea said:

Antimatter Loading

I removed the old system for simplification. No more factory, no more handling of that. Antimatter costs science (as previously discussed), and when you load to the pad a popup comes up asking you if you want to launch. 

@Nertea could you make the cost configurable in the game settings? I'd like to be able to make it cost funds, or require ISRU to get it at all.

[theJesuit]

1 hour ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

@Nertea could you make the cost configurable in the game settings? I'd like to be able to make it cost funds, or require ISRU to get it at all.

I think you will be able to harvest it in space, maybe in upper atmosphere too?.  Rational Resources certainly has setups for this.  No need to ISRU i think.  Just drill it out of the vacuum in low orbit.

This is described in Stephen Baxter's Flood and Ark books around Jupiter.  Both excellent reads.

Peace.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

1 hour ago, theJesuit said:

I think you will be able to harvest it in space, maybe in upper atmosphere too?.  Rational Resources certainly has setups for this.  No need to ISRU i think.  Just drill it out of the vacuum in low orbit.

This is described in Stephen Baxter's Flood and Ark books around Jupiter.  Both excellent reads.

Peace.

Oh I meant exospheric harvesting... just mining it out of the ground would make no sense.

[JadeOfMaar]

15 hours ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

@Nertea could you make the cost configurable in the game settings? I'd like to be able to make it cost funds, or require ISRU to get it at all.

Ah, but Antimatter production is a very delicate procedure that can be made faster if you can do it smarter (more science). It's not something that responds to you throwing your bank at it. (Well, that's just taking a shot at how @Nertea might be thinking.) You can already ISRU. Go farm it in orbit of whatever planet provides it. And if I'm not mistaken, there is an existing feature to upgrade the KSC's underground particle accelerator to produce faster and hold more.

14 hours ago, theJesuit said:

I think you will be able to harvest it in space, maybe in upper atmosphere too?.  Rational Resources certainly has setups for this.  No need to ISRU i think.  Just drill it out of the vacuum in low orbit.

This is described in Stephen Baxter's Flood and Ark books around Jupiter.  Both excellent reads.

Peace.

In space, specifically, in the equivalent of Van Allen belts is where Antimatter happens. No other environment (as far as I know. And I may not know much. Feel free to enlighten me) would allow Antimatter to occur. So it's only mine-able from space around certain planets and may be available near stars too.

FFT has always had a feature that adds a virtual giant particle accelerator under the KSC. It should be upgrade-able and it builds up the underground supply over time. FFT has also always had the parts to detect and capture it.

[TBenz]

On 8/9/2020 at 1:54 AM, theJesuit said:

Asni understand it - you have the MPL in orbit somewhere - say Minmus.  Send a craft down with a goo/ material bay.  Hit a bit biome and return to orbit and dock with the MPL to have it process the data on those experiements.  Once the data is all analysed you send the experients down again, redo them at the same biomes and return again to the orbiting MPL.  Rinse, repeat forever as long as you never return those particular specific experiements to kerbin or transmit them back.

I don't believe that's how the MPL works. My understanding is that a single MPL can only process an experiment from a specific situation once, and doesn't care about whether that experiment has been processed in a different MPL or recovered on/transmitted to kerbin. So a single MPL can only produce a limited amount of science. But you can launch an unlimited number of MPLs for an unlimited amount of science.

 

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Ah, but Antimatter production is a very delicate procedure that can be made faster if you can do it smarter (more science). It's not something that responds to you throwing your bank at it. (Well, that's just taking a shot at how @Nertea might be thinking.) You can already ISRU. Go farm it in orbit of whatever planet provides it. And if I'm not mistaken, there is an existing feature to upgrade the KSC's underground particle accelerator to produce faster and hold more.

In space, specifically, in the equivalent of Van Allen belts is where Antimatter happens. No other environment (as far as I know. And I may not know much. Feel free to enlighten me) would allow Antimatter to occur. So it's only mine-able from space around certain planets and may be available near stars too.

FFT has always had a feature that adds a virtual giant particle accelerator under the KSC. It should be upgrade-able and it builds up the underground supply over time. FFT has also always had the parts to detect and capture it.

It sounds very much like the particle accelerator at KSC is going away in favor of the science for antimatter system.

Edited August 10, 2020 by TBenz
Spelling

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Ah, but Antimatter production is a very delicate procedure that can be made faster if you can do it smarter (more science). It's not something that responds to you throwing your bank at it. (Well, that's just taking a shot at how @Nertea might be thinking.) You can already ISRU. Go farm it in orbit of whatever planet provides it. And if I'm not mistaken, there is an existing feature to upgrade the KSC's underground particle accelerator to produce faster and hold more.

In space, specifically, in the equivalent of Van Allen belts is where Antimatter happens. No other environment (as far as I know. And I may not know much. Feel free to enlighten me) would allow Antimatter to occur. So it's only mine-able from space around certain planets and may be available near stars too.

FFT has always had a feature that adds a virtual giant particle accelerator under the KSC. It should be upgrade-able and it builds up the underground supply over time. FFT has also always had the parts to detect and capture it.

This concept no longer exists, as described in earlier posts. 

18 hours ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

@Nertea could you make the cost configurable in the game settings? I'd like to be able to make it cost funds, or require ISRU to get it at all.

If something doesn't end up being configurable enough to your liking, you can always submit a pull request to add this feature. 

[JadeOfMaar]

Oh dear. That's a lot of enlightenment.

[JadeOfMaar]

@theJesuit @WarriorSabe @sturmhauke The is another means to keep science, and therefore, Antimatter, trickling in, but it's very fair vs the MPL exploits.

Some Kerbal Konstructs bases I've built or contributed to will have a static with a barracks module (which can receive hired kerbals from the astronaut complex) and at least one static with a research station module (the science farm). It costs you funds to open each facility in addition to the (exponential) cost of hiring the extra crew to put there. And each station will produce science that you most go and retrieve every 150 ~ 330 days. These places are:

• Some of the unique bases in JNSQ;
• KSC Extended (not the KSC itself but the TSC that it adds in a far off place on Kerbin).

Angel-125's wild Blue Tools has a science generation system too. I think it has an answer to the MPL exploits and it may have a feature for randomly (sometimes) generating a bucket of science points.

[Nertea]

Let's check out our resource detecting parts...

For scale, the cylindrical part of the CRANE detector is 1.25m. 

[WarriorSabe]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

This concept no longer exists, as described in earlier posts. 

To be clear, are you talking about just the antimatter factory or both the factory and the harvesting?

[Nertea]

38 minutes ago, WarriorSabe said:

To be clear, are you talking about just the antimatter factory or both the factory and the harvesting?

The factory. Presumably it still exists, but you don't need to manage it, you just pay x cost to get y units. 

The harvesting is still a ways off.

[Not a Spy]

hey nert, this is looking amazing!

keep up the amazing work!

i also like the returning engines and im wondering if a beam core engine will be returning?

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, Not a Spy said:

hey nert, this is looking amazing!

keep up the amazing work!

i also like the returning engines and im wondering if a beam core engine will be returning?

It will not.

[SpaceFace545]

10 hours ago, Nertea said:

It will not.

will it be deprecated or just completely removed

[Nertea]

10 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

will it be deprecated or just completely removed

You should pretend this new version is a different mod. As I've mentioned a few times, there will be no deprecation, compatibility or legacy parts. 

[SpaceFace545]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

You should pretend this new version is a different mod. As I've mentioned a few times, there will be no deprecation, compatibility or legacy parts. 

Cool

[FlyingCardboardbox]

Hi Nert,

I'm very impressed by the models you've done for Near Future Propulsion. I am switching builds from SMURFF RSS to full on RO and Principia. Have you considered making any RO configs for your LF-1 Charon an LF-2 Pyrios? Perhaps you could base them off of Princeton's LiLFA 30kW test model and extrapolate the power density (Thrust / m^2) with 200kW and up. The Hall thruster configs for HERMeS and such make the end game fun for probes, but getting 47,300 N out of Charon feels wrong in RO.

If you'd like to collaborate on configs, let me know too! 

[Cyne]

On 8/13/2020 at 12:05 AM, Nertea said:

You should pretend this new version is a different mod. As I've mentioned a few times, there will be no deprecation, compatibility or legacy parts. 

Guess I'm keeping old Fft as well, I've used the beam core engines a lot so if they were to be removed that's gonna be a huge issue for me 

[coyotesfrontier]

2 hours ago, Cyne said:

Guess I'm keeping old Fft as well, I've used the beam core engines a lot so if they were to be removed that's gonna be a huge issue for me 

You can always edit your save file to remove the old-FFT engines on your craft and replace them, it's a bit difficult but not that bad.

[Nertea]

13 hours ago, Cyne said:

Guess I'm keeping old Fft as well, I've used the beam core engines a lot so if they were to be removed that's gonna be a huge issue for me 

Ugh, so I mean you can do that. Your game might explode:

• The code handling aspects of that engine has been modified and replaced, and is no longer present in the new plugin
• Using both the old and the new plugin at the same time will not give you a good user experience^[*]

I guess you would need to update the config of that part to use the new stuff. That might be nontrivial.

* your game will crash

[Nertea]

I have been working hard on KSP stuff, perhaps too hard but I've made really solid progress on Space Dust, so I'll share some info

Goals

• Make atmospheric and exoatmospheric prospecting logical
• Allow more interesting and varied distributions 
• Exploration mechanics
• Add visualizations to help guide harvesting and exploration

Distributions

Resources are organized into Bands which sit around planets. These bands have shapes defined by distributions - I've written a new distribution specification system that expands on what stock provides. It is now possible to specify much more interesting distributions, like rings, shells, atmospheres... etc. It's also expandable with more distribution types as needed later. 

Exploration

This is where the fun begins. Stock scanning is limited - you get a value by moving a scanner into an area with resources - done. Space Dust resource bands have three states - Undiscovered, Discovered and Identified. Most bands start out Undiscovered, with the exception of atmospheric resources on the homeworld. Exploration causes you to Discover and then to Identify bands - Discovery tells you a resource is present nearby with lower fidelity, unlocking a low-resolution visualization, and Identification tells you everything you need to know.

Exploration abilities depend on scanners you use. There are two types of scanners - Local, which includes atmospheric samplers, sounders and similar and Remote, which includes telescopes. Send Local scanners mounted on probes to SOIs you are interested in - depending on the exact scanner, you will detect and identify resources in that SOI. Local scanners could need to actually fly into the resource belt to sample it, or might be more advanced and be able to image it from a distance. Remote scanners can target SOIs with an atmospheric survey, which take some time to complete, but when done will reveal resources around a target. 

Visualization

I've been developing some ways to visualize the resources you've discovered on the map view. 

Here's a set of resources floating around Kerbin - you can see that we have discovered some ?, and identified Argon and Xenon nearby. Only the Xenon distribution is shown

Here we can see all the distributions, including a faded, mystery ? in grey

The Mun has resources around it, but you can't tell because it hasn't been discovered yet.

Currently the Exploration mechanic is about 90% done and working well. Visuals are at maybe 50% - lots of improvements I want to make. Harvesting is at 0% - fairly simple though so I don't expect it to take forever. 

In terms of parts, well I have the two FFT detectors done now. I need to complete the two harvesters, and potentially two Space Dust specific parts. Once this is done I can release FFT betas.

[Kunosheru]

will it work with planet packs? or will separate complex individual codes be needed?

Edited August 16, 2020 by Kunosheru