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

[WarriorSabe]

Are there plans for bigger fusion or antimatter fuel tanks? Getting enough to realize the full potential of something like the Cascade or Frisbee ends up needing a lot of tanks and looks kinda janky with tons of little ones, and there aren't any that even fit on the Hammertong.

Also, is the antimatter storage ring supposed to be massively worse than the containers? I get it's a lower tech one and is cheaper, but I feel like it should have some advantage - better energy efficiency comes to mind as a potential option. Like, it's heavier, bulkier, and less efficient than all the other ones so even if you're just using it for a Casaba you'd be better off using one of the high-capacity tanks and just not filling it much, aside from cost.

Edited December 15, 2020 by WarriorSabe

[toric5]

so I just tried to use a fusion reactor to sustain AM containment. I seems like the fusion reactors dont save their running status through save/load.

build a craft with a fusion reactor (I did use adequate cooling), charge it, and turn it on. f5/f9, and the reactor is now off and needs charging again.

[wafflemoder]

Two things I noticed about the FX-2 and FX-3 fusion reactors that may not be the intended behavior:

1) D-He3 mode consumes 10 times as much fuel as D-D mode, but only puts out twice as much power.

2) Assuming I did the math correct, the specific energy of the D-D and D-He3 fuel cycles are less than that of enriched uranium in the NFE reactors. 

For this, I used a two part formula. One for finding the energy per unit of fuel (generated power/ fuel use), and the other for converting in game units to kg (mass/units)

- The NFE reactors give fuel specific energies between approximately 78 to 131 GJ/kg, varying between the reactors (which interestingly gives electrical efficiencies of around 3-5% for 3.5% enriched uranium)

- In D-D fusion mode, the FX2 and FX3 have fuel specific energies of 23 and 28 GJ/kg respectively, between a third and fifth that of NFE reactors. Interestingly though there is still a use case for the D-D reactors despite their lower specific power (not counting radiators) and fuel specific energies than the NFE reactors, and that is that their fuel is comparatively inexpensive.

- In D-He3 mode, the FX2 and FX3 have lower fuel specific energies of just 7.3 and 9.1 GJ/kg, although the high specific power makes them useful either way.

Hope this helps

Edited December 15, 2020 by wafflemoder

[Nertea]

12 hours ago, toric5 said:

so I just tried to use a fusion reactor to sustain AM containment. I seems like the fusion reactors dont save their running status through save/load.

build a craft with a fusion reactor (I did use adequate cooling), charge it, and turn it on. f5/f9, and the reactor is now off and needs charging again.

Good find - that's been around for a while, but it looks like an easy fix. 

16 hours ago, WarriorSabe said:

Are there plans for bigger fusion or antimatter fuel tanks? Getting enough to realize the full potential of something like the Cascade or Frisbee ends up needing a lot of tanks and looks kinda janky with tons of little ones, and there aren't any that even fit on the Hammertong.

No not really. Just... more work. Don't want more work right now when I'm trying to hand off the mod. 

16 hours ago, WarriorSabe said:

Also, is the antimatter storage ring supposed to be massively worse than the containers? I get it's a lower tech one and is cheaper, but I feel like it should have some advantage - better energy efficiency comes to mind as a potential option. Like, it's heavier, bulkier, and less efficient than all the other ones so even if you're just using it for a Casaba you'd be better off using one of the high-capacity tanks and just not filling it much, aside from cost.

I can look at it again but yes, it is really meant only be used for entry-level. 

2 hours ago, wafflemoder said:

1) D-He3 mode consumes 10 times as much fuel as D-D mode, but only puts out twice as much power.

Good find! This used to be automatically normalized to mass, when I rewrote the module I think I neglected to adjust it. 

2 hours ago, wafflemoder said:

2) Assuming I did the math correct, the specific energy of the D-D and D-He3 fuel cycles are less than that of enriched uranium in the NFE reactors. 

Ehhh... you're probably right but if you look at that kind of thing across my mods, you're going to find far worse realism issues. The initial rates were chosen to allow a certain amount of runtime off a small tank that didn't seem too arduous. 

[coyotesfrontier]

[WarriorSabe]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

No not really. Just... more work. Don't want more work right now when I'm trying to hand off the mod. 

Alright, I get that. There's just also a problem with partcount - I tried to actually make proper use of a Frisbee and my computer just completely hates me now because I had to stick 660 antimatter tanks on. You need 36 of them for each of the big round hydrogen tanks.

Also, separate issue, my heat production isn't going down as I increase the length of the thing, though I think I'm a version behind right now.

Turns out, laptops and 1260 part ships don't mix

[toric5]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

Good find - that's been around for a while, but it looks like an easy fix.

developing the same craft (switched to nuke reactor), and found another one. the bussard scoop doesnt seem to work. screenie and log attached.

log  (I am exceeding the maxlength on normal pastebin!)

[SpaceFace545]

20 minutes ago, WarriorSabe said:

Alright, I get that. There's just also a problem with partcount - I tried to actually make proper use of a Frisbee and my computer just completely hates me now because I had to stick 660 antimatter tanks on. You need 36 of them for each of the big round hydrogen tanks.

Also, separate issue, my heat production isn't going down as I increase the length of the thing, though I think I'm a version behind right now.

Turns out, laptops and 1260 part ships don't mix

Hey @Nertea similar to the post above, you need a giant amount of radiators for most of these engines especially the torch drives, could you add massive extendible radiators that would be one part so we could skip the mess you see above.

[TBenz]

22 minutes ago, WarriorSabe said:

Alright, I get that. There's just also a problem with partcount - I tried to actually make proper use of a Frisbee and my computer just completely hates me now because I had to stick 660 antimatter tanks on. You need 36 of them for each of the big round hydrogen tanks.

Also, separate issue, my heat production isn't going down as I increase the length of the thing, though I think I'm a version behind right now.

Turns out, laptops and 1260 part ships don't mix

It would seem that that doesn't actually count as "proper" use of the Frisbee, as it's pretty clear the tank sizes don't support that scale of a build.

 

6 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Hey @Nertea similar to the post above, you need a giant amount of radiators for most of these engines especially the torch drives, could you add massive extendible radiators that would be one part so we could skip the mess you see above.

The full length Frisbee should be cooling itself fine on its own, that number of radiators is definitely not required. I haven't had a chance to play with any of the more recent builds (a certain other game has swallowed all my time) but I don't remember anything else being particularly prohibitive cooling wise

[Clamp-o-Tron]

30 minutes ago, WarriorSabe said:

Alright, I get that. There's just also a problem with partcount - I tried to actually make proper use of a Frisbee and my computer just completely hates me now because I had to stick 660 antimatter tanks on. You need 36 of them for each of the big round hydrogen tanks.

Also, separate issue, my heat production isn't going down as I increase the length of the thing, though I think I'm a version behind right now.

Turns out, laptops and 1260 part ships don't mix

The GitHub repo has some antimatter tanks with much more volume than the ring. Right now it doesn’t look their capacities are balanced, and they have nearly 100x more antimatter than the ring (which doesn’t feel right). Regardless of their final capacity, they will be useful

[Nertea]

28 minutes ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

The GitHub repo has some antimatter tanks with much more volume than the ring. Right now it doesn’t look their capacities are balanced, and they have nearly 100x more antimatter than the ring (which doesn’t feel right). Regardless of their final capacity, they will be useful

He's already using those (and yes, they are correct). It's just a ridiculous ship.

48 minutes ago, toric5 said:

developing the same craft (switched to nuke reactor), and found another one. the bussard scoop doesnt seem to work. screenie and log attached.

Might see that bug, at least I see a > sign in the code that should be a ==, will continue to investigate. 

40 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Hey @Nertea similar to the post above, you need a giant amount of radiators for most of these engines especially the torch drives, could you add massive extendible radiators that would be one part so we could skip the mess you see above.

Nah you have enough. The worst case needs about 100 MW of capacity which is something like 10 of the largest radiator. 

 

 

[WarriorSabe]

12 minutes ago, Nertea said:

He's already using those (and yes, they are correct). It's just a ridiculous ship.

It is? It's still only got down to a massive 0.2 TWR when full, and the mass ratio's only 1.4. I guess I just thought the Frisbee was meant for getting lots of dV into ships with big payloads.

Edited December 16, 2020 by WarriorSabe

[Wilhelm Kerman]

Do you have plans to add the laser core antimatter engine? It has an ISP far above other concept antimatter engines while requiring less radiator mass.

Also, are these engines meant to be for interstellar missions? The beam core antimatter engine has an ISP of half the KSPIE Daedalus even though in real life it has one of around 10 million according to Atomic Rockets. If they are meant to be for going interstellar then it is really annoying having to stack so many small fuel tanks on one ship which increases part count drastically and lag. Would you ever consider making larger tanks?

[coyotesfrontier]

3 hours ago, Wilhelm Kerman said:

Also, are these engines meant to be for interstellar missions? The beam core antimatter engine has an ISP of half the KSPIE Daedalus even though in real life it has one of around 10 million according to Atomic Rockets. If they are meant to be for going interstellar then it is really annoying having to stack so many small fuel tanks on one ship which increases part count drastically and lag. Would you ever consider making larger tanks?

It's kind of perplexing because Nertea doesn't use planet mods, and these engines are massive overkill in the stock system. Maybe he just likes going fast?

[PocketBrotector]

1 hour ago, Wilhelm Kerman said:

Also, are these engines meant to be for interstellar missions?

I suspect that FFT will be finding its way into my GameData folder at almost exactly the same time as Grannus Expansion Pack. I sort of assume that the use cases for better-than-Kerbal-Atomics-or-Near-Future-Propulsion engines are getting to very distant locations in a reasonable timeframe, whether that's another star altogether or simply the outer edges of the local solar system (e.g. Nara in JNSQ.) Looking forward to it either way.

[Nertea]

3 hours ago, coyotesfrontier said:

It's kind of perplexing because Nertea doesn't use planet mods, and these engines are massive overkill in the stock system. Maybe he just likes going fast?

I don't?

To everyone continuously asking for more stuff: (really? I don't do enough for you all?)

On 12/9/2020 at 1:29 PM, Nertea said:

This marks the end of what I had planned for features, so I would like to concentrate on bugfixing and won't be adding anything elsemajor. Two things I had considered adding in the last few days:

• Bringing back the AIM drive as a smaller form factor (2.5m) antimatter drive. I have an interesting concept for this in my head, which is why it's on the table. 
• Adding a smaller bulldozer form factor He3 harvester (one harverster 'box'). This depends on how well you people like He3 harvesting in general. 

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Nertea

[ChubbyPanda]

@Nertea I'm a first time poster'er'er ish but I have been a long time KSP player and a long time player with mods and yours are one of the first I install and ones I use the most.  The models are fantastic,  the new parts are balanced, with genuine thought given to game progression, patches provided for elements we don't like, always updated, you always respond to posts.  Thank you...

[Hohmannson]

On 12/10/2020 at 12:29 AM, Nertea said:

Adding a smaller bulldozer form factor

That would be really great, the current one is quite big to be strapped on rover, like the real ones are proposed

[danfarnsy]

23 hours ago, PocketBrotector said:

I suspect that FFT will be finding its way into my GameData folder at almost exactly the same time as Grannus Expansion Pack. I sort of assume that the use cases for better-than-Kerbal-Atomics-or-Near-Future-Propulsion engines are getting to very distant locations in a reasonable timeframe, whether that's another star altogether or simply the outer edges of the local solar system (e.g. Nara in JNSQ.) Looking forward to it either way.

They also provide fast transfers or high payload fractions for closer planets, or having multi-planet tours with transfers well outside the normal windows. 

 

22 hours ago, Nertea said:

To everyone continuously asking for more stuff: (really? I don't do enough for you all?)

You do so very much. Thank you.

[Captain Sierra]

Thought I'd work on some harvesting vehicle prototypes. So far I've come up with this glorious monstrosity:

No your eyes do not deceive you on my engine choice, those are fusion tokamaks.

I ended up swapping out the Pluto multimode engines for Fireflashes because the Plutos just guzzle too much fuel in reaction-mass mode. Its better to rely solely on the fusion engines for the punch to orbit, but this only works on Kerbin and how it will work skimming the stratosphere of Jool is another matter entirely.  The thing weighs almost 200 tons fully loaded (I cut the monoprop down to only 2000kg which might cut it close and the 3.75m fusion tank inside is only at 10% load) so even four nuclear thermal jet engines can't even break Mach. I have to kick in rocket power to go supersonic and get the ramjet compression going. Once there its a Mach 4.5 cruise to 18km before I punch the rockets a second time and go for orbit.

Honestly I run into the whole "not enough static thrust" problem with the 2.5m engines from NFAero pretty regularly. In terms of craft-to-engine ratio its definitely on the low side compared to smaller successful SSTOs I've built but the alternatives just feel structurally ridiculous (in this instance I lower the wing, double up the nacelles on the top and have 8 engines, which IMO looks hideously unrealistic). But the balance of those jet engines is a topic for another time.

 

So on another note, I have some prettiness of the new engine in action. Yeah, I see what Nertea meant when he counted three torches. This is definitely in that performance realm.

Spoiler

 

 

I didn't even test the LH2-afterburning but even in standard reaction products mode, hot dayum this thing is sweet. I was getting just over 1g and 340k dV with those two tanks. I'm not sure how the radiator power needed compares to a full-length Fresnel offhand but I can check. The lack of shorter options is a bit of a challenge but its absolutely worth overcoming for this performance envelope.

[Nertea]

FFT 0.9.10

• Updated SpaceDust to 0.2.3
• Added A-7007 'Dirac' Antimatter Initiated Microfusion Engine: small lightweight antimatter fusion engine with great impulse, lower thrust. Generates power.
• Fixed fusion reactors turning off on game load
• Corrected fuel usage of D/He3 fusion reactors being way too high (applies to reactors and integrated reactor in Discovery, Fresnel)
• Minor fixes to ACMF engine FX

 

 

 

 

[Starhelperdude]

can someone pls put pictures of the new pretty engine here? Ksp isn't working for me

[ra4nd0m]

Ehh. More stuff to translate.  
I have some kind of love-hate relationship with those new parts  due to the fact that with each new part there is more and more work for me. I really would like to see this mod to be fully translated from the release so it is some kind of awkward race for me to push new localization before the next release.

And there are NFE NFLV and RestockPlus still waiting for localization. Hopefully I translated RestockPlus almost completely this September. But with that amount of text it is really hard to catch all of the typos. 

Ehh. I really need some kind of editor to check this stuff. . . 

[Nertea]

Just now, ra4nd0m said:

I have some kind of love-hate relationship with those new parts  due to the fact that with each new part there is more and more work for me. I really would like to see this mod to be fully translated from the release so it is some kind of awkward race for me to push new localization before the next release.

 

Lol sorry, just one(?) more part left for the release.

9 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

can someone pls put pictures of the new pretty engine here? Ksp isn't working for me

[ra4nd0m]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

Lol sorry, just one(?) more part left for the release.

[insert original reduced scope joke here].  Do not worry about it. I really enjoy these fancy futuristic engines. They are one of my favorite topics! The biggest problem in translating this stuff to russian is words length.

Primary example (just count letters): термоядерный синтез means fusion in russian.  So I try to replace words with abbreviations or paraphrase something to make it shorter. Hardest part so far was Axial flow z-pinch. There are simply no russian language analouges for this thing so I had to come up with something to properly convey the meaning of this in russian. And this seriously affects  how fast I burn out.