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

[Scotius]

Love the new small tanks Especially that radial one. Can you make monopropellant version? It doesn't have to be much different - only add yellow stripe as visual help.

[TheSuperintendnt]

These are very nice and realistic to! I wish I could figure out how to do this but I'm only good with SketchUp.

[Helix935]

i know right

[Nertea]

It just takes practice

Slow day today, so more stuff:

Unwrapped/textured the reactor and the two xenon tanks. They're really asking for a specular pass and some weathering, but I still intend on waiting for ingame tests first.

I also decided that, when I went to unwrap it, I didn't like the 2.5m reactor anymore, so I remodeled it to be... cooler.

And finally, here's a picture of a stack of bits as Sapphire requested.

So now to complete that earlier list, I just need to unwrap and texture the two MPDT engines and the large nuke. Wohoo!

[czokletmuss]

This is great but some adapter and/or radiation shield in the same aesthethic would be a good idea

[ZobrAA]

It just takes practice

Slow day today, so more stuff:

Lovely!

Some thoughts:

I thought also, is this realy enough such a tiny radiators to cool down reactors, especially the big one?

[mrrpamplemousse]

that's very good work, I want it!

[Nertea]

I thought also, is this realy enough such a tiny radiators to cool down reactors, especially the big one?

You got me, probably not. Well, the small one is likely ok, if that mini-reactor I based it on is workable. The large one... well, probably not. I don't know much about these things, but I like the area I have. There's a point at which it would become unworkable for KSP though.

Good ideas for the parts though. The decouplable tank and the radial reactor would be easy enough I expect. As to reinforcing the inline one, I'm going to be trying to make fairings for both reactors, so they would be taking the stress loads during liftoff and high acceleration.

This is great but some adapter and/or radiation shield in the same aesthethic would be a good idea

Tentatively planned too, along with the solar panels. No point to them, but they would make nice structural parts.

Anyways, I got some parts ingame this afternoon, and fiddled with engine effects. I've also been doing specular/detailing to match the stock parts, and it's going quite well. I won't say they're indistinguishable, but at least they seem to share the same visual lineage now.

Would anyone know why the part won't load in KSP if I use the KSP/Particles/Additive shader? I'd really rather use it for the glow (Translucent unlit seems to still get some shadow and specular effects even when off). I also am not sure how I can change the scale of the engine particles, but I'm sure I can work it out. Eventually.

So far the small and large inline tank and the engine are looking good. Next up is the small reactor, then the radial tank, then those others.

[hoojiwana]

You actually got the particles working on the engine?

[Scotius]

Awesome This ship looks like some concept art for long range exploration ships in RL. Also, if you want bigger radiators:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43840-Hab-Hub-%28and-other-strange-things%29

[ZobrAA]

Wow! It's gorgeous!

Though exhaust cone can be even twice bigger - this is a real thing, not a faint exhaust of ion thruster!

Would anyone know why the part won't load in KSP if I use the KSP/Particles/Additive shader? I'd really rather use it for the glow (Translucent unlit seems to still get some shadow and specular effects even when off). I also am not sure how I can change the scale of the engine particles, but I'm sure I can work it out. Eventually.

Yep, this is a problem. Same thing on parachutes canopy ...and no solution for this time I think. Ñ‚_Ñ‚ But nevertheless it's not a big deal and unexpected shadow is better than wrong exhaust look and feel...

[irishmanerrant]

I am beyond excited to be able to have a decently fast, interplanetary, nonnuclear ship! I hope these get out to us as fast as possible!

[mrrpamplemousse]

This thing will be the next big thing after KAS, B9 and KOSMOS

[Nertea]

Thanks everyone Good response certainly encourages me to continue the project!

Anyways, learned to write basic plugins today, so I wrote a script to handle what I want to do with reactors. Since all the reactors I'm using will be based on Stirling heat engines, they'll still function with radiators closed, just at a far lower capacity. The 50kW reactor produces up to 250Ec of power (25 kW by my conversion) when opened, and only 15Ec when closed. You can therefore run it closed if you like for fun. They also have slow response times, so it takes a little while for the reactor to ramp up to full capacity or to shut down. I'm not 100% happy with the texture right now, so I'll be tweaking it somewhat. I also want to have the heatpipes glow a reddish tone when it's on, so that'll be cool.

Here's a shot of some stuff in the VAB. As you can see I finished the radial xenon tank too.

The VASIMR *should* be using 2000 Ec right now, but it doesn't seem to. It's quite strange, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. It seems to consume power when I change the throttle setting, and when the total ship power output drops below a certain amount. Odd. Now for some beauty shots!

I'm currently unwrapping the two MPD thrusters, so we're getting there...

[TimothyC]

I don't install a lot of mods, but I am looking forward to this one.

[Mekan1k]

Can you post the vasmir code? that problem you are describing sounds familiar somehow...

[Kerbal01]

This may make me want to send a probe to Eeloo, I've never done that before.

[Nertea]

Can you post the vasmir code? that problem you are describing sounds familiar somehow...

The engine is just a basic cfg edit with this module section:

MODULE
		{
			name = ModuleEngines
			thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform
			exhaustDamage = False
			ignitionThreshold = 0.1
			minThrust = 0
			maxThrust = 31.5
			heatProduction = 0
			PROPELLANT
			{
				name = ElectricCharge
				ratio = 10000.0
			}
			PROPELLANT
			{
				name = XenonGas

				ratio = 0.5
			}
			atmosphereCurve
			{
				key = 0 9700
			}

		}

This is the part of the reactor that does the Ec generation for the reactor:

  public override void OnFixedUpdate()
        {
            if (Enabled)
            {

                 // if radiators are not open
                if (animator.CurrentState != RadiatorState.Deployed)
                {
                    currentGeneration = Mathf.MoveTowards(currentGeneration, PowerGenerationRetracted, TimeWarp.fixedDeltaTime * PowerGenerationResponseRate);
                    this.part.RequestResource("ElectricCharge", -currentGeneration);
                }
                else
                {
                    currentGeneration = Mathf.MoveTowards(currentGeneration, PowerGenerationDeployed, TimeWarp.fixedDeltaTime * PowerGenerationResponseRate);
                    this.part.RequestResource("ElectricCharge", -currentGeneration);
                }

            }
            else {

                currentGeneration = Mathf.MoveTowards(currentGeneration, 0f, TimeWarp.fixedDeltaTime * PowerGenerationResponseRate);
                this.part.RequestResource("ElectricCharge", -currentGeneration);

             }
        }

This may make me want to send a probe to Eeloo, I've never done that before.

I know! I'm excited to play with this myself, even. I love sticking dozens of solar panels on everything I build, I figure some of my toys should be able to run this at 1/4 power. Can anyone tell me how powerful the panels in the Kosmos pack are?

[Sapphire]

The largest KOSMOS panel, the Balka solar wing, has a charge rate of 200.

[Scotius]

I advise you to take a look at KSP Interstellar mod. It contains two sets of very nice reactors, electric generators, microwave power transfer and very cool radiators. If you need a lot of power, Fractal_UK does have something for you .

[Mekan1k]

Or you could just... You know... Make your own high-density batteries.

[Nertea]

Ah, so I figured it out, due to a very poor understanding of how the LiquidEngine module works. I've got some new formulae for sense-making values and behaviour now, so that's good.

Here are the 3 engines I'll be releasing so far (left to right), with their KSP specs. They all have power curves that cause them to be useless in atmosphere of any type. They all run off xenon tanks, which is ok for the first iteration of this pack, but next version I'll switch the VASIMR to argon and the MPDTs to hydrogen or lithium, with their own tanks and densities.

• VASIMR 200kW: 9700 Isp, 31.5 kN of thrust, needing about 2,000 Ec/s to run
  
• MPDT 3500kW: 4700 Isp, 553.125 kN of thrust, needing about 35,000 Ec/s to run (even more yikes)
  
• MPDT 1500kW: 10500 Isp, 164.3 kN of thrust, needing about 15,000 Ec/s to run (yikes)
  

The two MPDT engines are so ridiculous as to be scary, the larger engine is almost as much power as a Skipper! I hope the tech actually gets off the ground and approaches those lab tests in real life, it would be nice.

I would also love to see a KSP ship built to generate 35k Ec/s .

I will release this once I texture the 2.5m reactor, so maybe by the end of the week. I also plan on making some fairings for the engines.

Does anyone know how to hide meshes in the editor? I know you can hide them in part preview with the Icon_Hidden tag, but I can't find anything about that either. I could do it with a custom engine module I expect, I just don't want to rewrite LiquidEngine yet (maybe next version).

[NoMrBond]

If your mesh (presumably for a collider or something?) has no texture associated with it, you can delete the "mesh render" element for that mesh in Unity in its hierarchy

Maybe that's not appropriate for what you're doing though, is this for engine shrouds?

[Nertea]

This is for the engine effects (unlit translucent shaders), which still occasionally display shadows (which is odd, as I unticked all those boxes for export). It's not critical, but it annoys me when I'm placing the parts in the editor and i occasionally see a shadow on a cone.

[Gaius]

• VASIMR 200kW: 9700 Isp, 31.5 kN of thrust, needing about 2,000 Ec/s to run
  
• MPDT 3500kW: 4700 Isp, 553.125 kN of thrust, needing about 35,000 Ec/s to run (even more yikes)
  
• MPDT 1500kW: 10500 Isp, 164.3 kN of thrust, needing about 15,000 Ec/s to run (yikes)
  

[...]

I would also love to see a KSP ship built to generate 35k Ec/s .

That's a bit crazy. It also seems a bit out-of-whack with the rest of KSP regarding what Ec/s means. The PB-NUK represents something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPHS-RTG which is a 300W RTG, and it produces 0.75 Ec/s. This suggests 1 Ec/s is around half a kilowatt, maybe more when you consider the PB-NUK is 80kg whereas the GPHS-RTG is only 57kg, although that would put it in line with the SNAP-27 which generated 75W and weighed 20kg. Worse, looking at the lights, the huge spotlight that can illuminate the entire KSC at night quite brightly if you point it at it has a power draw of 0.04 Ec/s. That would suggest that 1 Ec/s is well over a kilowatt (there's no way a 40W bulb is generating that much light), more like 10kW, but maybe the lights are massively OP. In any case, your numbers suggest 1 Ec/s is only about tenth of a kilowatt, which if true, would make the PB-NUK awfully weak for its mass, and the lights in the game utterly ridiculously powerful for 4W bulbs. I'm thinking your balancing is off by an order of magnitude here, give or take.

Alas, there really seems no way to reconcile the numbers in the game as currently used -- realistic figures for the lights make the PB-NUK massively OP on its power generation, whereas realistic figures for the PB-NUK make the lights massively OP on their power draw. But going for something somewhere in the middle, say 1 E/s = 1 kW, makes the PB-NUK only a bit OP (it was original 1 E/s and they dropped it to 0.75, they probably should have dropped it to 0.5 if they're thinking 1E/s=1kW), and the lights, well, still rather ridiculously powerful for 40W bulbs but a lot better than assuming they're 4W bulbs lol.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Gaius