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

[toric5]

though I may as well share one of the things Ive been using this mod for. I wanted to get my surveying of the solar system done before any transfer windows, so I can plan bases and send them on the first transfer window. This crazy contraption. 150km/s DV, and my computer can handle x physwarp with it. A thrust nerf bat wont help much, as I can just let KoS perform the manuver while I read a book.

 

This particular craft is headed to Jool, and will arive 70 days after it launched from kerbin.

[Nertea]

That's pretty cool and I might say, working as intended. I miiiight up the heat needs a bit but that is why those engines are great. 

[Selective Genius]

12 hours ago, Nertea said:

petawatt laser beams

 

Spoiler

Space police: Hey, you! What are you doing with this deadly laser?!

Nertea: Oh this is just a propulsion system.

Space police: What about that laser over there?

Nertea: That's a mining laser.

Space police: And I suppose that thing in your hand is a bar-code reader?

Nertea: Oh no, THIS is a deadly laser *pew* *pew*

 

[AmpCat]

Holy cow. Now I have my 10 days off for Thanksgiving planned. Nertea's FFT!

[Nertea]

Please note that I am moving my repositories to a central Github Organization and changing deployment scripting to use Github Actions. Everything seems to be going smoothly, all the redirects/links should still work but let me know if something is broken (missing files in builds, broken links, etc).

FFT 0.9.4

• Updated SystemHeat to 0.1.5
• Updated SpaceDust to 0.1.5
• Updated Waterfall to 0.2.6
• Added A-834M 'Frisbee' Antimatter Engine: beam core engine, tons of Isp, pretty good thrust, gigawatts of heat.
• Added A-CY1-5 Antimatter Storage Container: 5m antimatter storage tank
• Added A-CY1-25XL Antimatter Storage Container: 2.5m long antimatter storage
• Added A-CY1-25 Antimatter Storage Container: 2.5m antimattery storage
• Added PK-50 'Nova' Antimatter Facility: huge, unwieldy reactor for generating antimatter
• Fixed ModulePulseEngine's handling of secondary engine modes such that the secondary mode's effects won't get stuck
• ModuleAntimatterTank now supports some indicator lights when on/off/leaking
• Changed Hammertong second mode name from Low Density to Deuterium Rich
• Balance adjustments
  • Reduced Clarke thrust from 50 to 20 kN
  • Moved Fresnel from Exotic Fusion Reactions to Advanced Fusion Reactions
  • Moved Hammertong from Advanced Fusion Reactions to Exotic Fusion Reactions
  • Moved Verne from Experimental Nuclear Propulsion to Exotic Nuclear Propulsion
  • Rebalanced Antimatter tankage mass and cost ratios

Just a note that I haven't looked at the Fresnel balance this update, been busy. Next time.

Edited November 21, 2020 by Nertea

[toric5]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

Please note that I am moving my repositories to a central Github Organization and changing deployment scripting to use Github Actions. Everything seems to be going smoothly, all the redirects/links should still work but let me know if something is broken (missing files in builds, broken links, etc).

FFT 0.9.4

• Updated SystemHeat to 0.1.5
• Updated SpaceDust to 0.1.5
• Updated Waterfall to 0.2.6
• Added A-834M 'Frisbee' Antimatter Engine: beam core engine, tons of Isp, pretty good thrust, gigawatts of heat.
• Added A-CY1-5 Antimatter Storage Container: 5m antimatter storage tank
• Added A-CY1-25XL Antimatter Storage Container: 2.5m long antimatter storage
• Added A-CY1-25 Antimatter Storage Container: 2.5m antimattery storage
• Added PK-50 'Nova' Antimatter Facility: huge, unwieldy reactor for generating antimatter
• Fixed ModulePulseEngine's handling of secondary engine modes such that the secondary mode's effects won't get stuck
• ModuleAntimatterTank now supports some indicator lights when on/off/leaking
• Changed Hammertong second mode name from Low Density to Deuterium Rich
• Balance adjustments
  • Reduced Clarke thrust from 50 to 20 kN
  • Moved Fresnel from Exotic Fusion Reactions to Advanced Fusion Reactions
  • Moved Hammertong from Advanced Fusion Reactions to Exotic Fusion Reactions
  • Moved Verne from Experimental Nuclear Propulsion to Exotic Nuclear Propulsion
  • Rebalanced Antimatter tankage mass and cost ratios

Just a note that I haven't looked at the Fresnel balance this update, been busy. Next time.

A-CY1-25 and A-CY1-25XL have their node placements backwards. the A-CY1-25 has nodes outside the structure, A-CY1-25XL inside the structure.

EDIT: also, radial attachment is... wonky for the AM tanks and the AM factory

EDIT: also, isnt the nuculear smelter supposed to be able to create ablator to refurbish the cabasa?

Edited November 21, 2020 by toric5

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, toric5 said:

A-CY1-25 and A-CY1-25XL have their node placements backwards. the A-CY1-25 has nodes outside the structure, A-CY1-25XL inside the structure.

EDIT: also, radial attachment is... wonky for the AM tanks and the AM factory

EDIT: also, isnt the nuculear smelter supposed to be able to create ablator to refurbish the cabasa?

[Nertea]

Few quick fixes before bed:

• Fixed A-CY1-25 and A-CY1-25XL stack nodes being swapped
• Adjusted attach nodes for A-CY1-5 ,A-CY1-25 and A-CY1-25XL
• Disabled the ability to surface attach the Nova
• Increased Clarke heat generation to 16MW from 13 MW
• Reduced mass of Casaba from 22 to 15 t
• Increased thrust of Casaba from 310 to 420 kN
• Reduced power usage of Impulse to 150 kW
• Considerably reduced the heat generation of extended Fresnel lengths

[TBenz]

The Frisbee is very cool looking, but it's got heat issues.

To begin with, the description in the parts menu indicates it has a 5 GW thermal output, but the system heat simulator claims the total generation for it is 2.048 GW. Interestingly, that is exactly 2^11 MW. And adding a second Frisbee will actually double the reported generation, so if there is a hard coded upper limit that is reducing the heat generation, it's per part and not vessel wide. 

Additionally, the built in radiators don't seem to do anything at present, which makes cooling it messy. You need 158 of the DF-8K (best of the radiators out of stock and heat control) and the DF-8K doesn't lend itself that well to bulk placement. The EF-2K's ability to place on itself could in theory be used to build out a set of massive panels that can cool the craft while looking somewhat sensible, but it has around a third of the DF-8K's cooling capability, meaning you need 3 times as many of them. 482 panels is a pretty significant part count bloat. I have yet to successfully design a vessel with sufficient cooling that doesn't kraken itself apart from the sheer part count. 

 

Edit: I did it. Had to hack gravity down to 0.01 to keep it from collapsing on the pad, and then cheated it up into orbit. When I turned on the radiators, the game turned into a slideshow (around 4 FPS). But it fires the Frisbee without overheating. It's a landmark achievement for Kerbalkind or something.

 

Edit 2: Playing around in the editor, I can now see the total heat generation of the Frisbee dropping as I change the radiator length. I'm not sure why I failed to notice this before. 

Edited November 21, 2020 by TBenz

[Terrestris]

An AM drive run on hydrogen !?

Venture Star is the first thing rush into my mind. 

(but I guess two big radiators won't be enough for Frisbee LOL)

And then I realize why those SSPX cargo containers look so familiar (maybe not). 

PS: Just wondering if is possible to add some AM tanks inside the Frisbee's hollow structure, feel like kind of waste for those space.

If the considers are about thermal or other technical issues or you think that's a waste of your valuable time, than forget what I said.

Always thanks your works. 

[Nertea]

9 hours ago, TBenz said:

The Frisbee is very cool looking, but it's got heat issues.

To begin with, the description in the parts menu indicates it has a 5 GW thermal output, but the system heat simulator claims the total generation for it is 2.048 GW. Interestingly, that is exactly 2^11 MW. And adding a second Frisbee will actually double the reported generation, so if there is a hard coded upper limit that is reducing the heat generation, it's per part and not vessel wide. 

Additionally, the built in radiators don't seem to do anything at present, which makes cooling it messy. You need 158 of the DF-8K (best of the radiators out of stock and heat control) and the DF-8K doesn't lend itself that well to bulk placement. The EF-2K's ability to place on itself could in theory be used to build out a set of massive panels that can cool the craft while looking somewhat sensible, but it has around a third of the DF-8K's cooling capability, meaning you need 3 times as many of them. 482 panels is a pretty significant part count bloat. I have yet to successfully design a vessel with sufficient cooling that doesn't kraken itself apart from the sheer part count. 

 

Edit: I did it. Had to hack gravity down to 0.01 to keep it from collapsing on the pad, and then cheated it up into orbit. When I turned on the radiators, the game turned into a slideshow (around 4 FPS). But it fires the Frisbee without overheating. It's a landmark achievement for Kerbalkind or something.

Edit 2: Playing around in the editor, I can now see the total heat generation of the Frisbee dropping as I change the radiator length. I'm not sure why I failed to notice this before. 

 I actually back-calculated the radiative capacity based on the number of integrated radiator panels versus the EF-2K's capabilities. In theory you should need no cooling with the full sized engine, however, looks like I made a mistake and there is still one 'segment' worth of cooling needed at full extension. I can fix that. 

While writing that I realized thats a bad assumption as you'll lose half of each radiator panel to self shadowing, so all those numbers will get cut by 2 as well.

1 hour ago, Dr.Lxweei said:

An AM drive run on hydrogen !?

Venture Star is the first thing rush into my mind. 

(but I guess two big radiators won't be enough for Frisbee LOL)

And then I realize why those SSPX cargo containers look so familiar (maybe not). 

PS: Just wondering if is possible to add some AM tanks inside the Frisbee's hollow structure, feel like kind of waste for those space.

If the considers are about thermal or other technical issues or you think that's a waste of your valuable time, than forget what I said.

Always thanks your works. 

Yes, this is the same physics concept as the Venture Star engine. I actually made the colliders hollow so you can do that. In 'reality' you don't want to put antimatter tanks in there, even with the large shadow shield there are still too many gamma rays to make that safe. 

Pay attention to the length numbers on this diagram

Edited November 21, 2020 by Nertea

[ra4nd0m]

Are those radiators on Frisbee supposed to unfold?  I searched and not found any to unfold them

[Nertea]

Nay.

[TBenz]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

I actually back-calculated the radiative capacity based on the number of integrated radiator panels versus the EF-2K's capabilities. In theory you should need no cooling with the full sized engine, however, looks like I made a mistake and there is still one 'segment' worth of cooling needed at full extension. I can fix that. 

While writing that I realized thats a bad assumption as you'll lose half of each radiator panel to self shadowing, so all those numbers will get cut by 2 as well.

Something still seems off.  At full length the Frisbee has 128 of those radiator panels, which are slightly smaller than the EF-2K and only one sided. If we ignore the size difference, we could compare them to 64 EF-2K's, which should only provide 272 MW of thermal rejection. But the Frisbee appears to actually be providing 2048 MW of thermal rejection at full length. At its current actual heat output, you would need somewhere near 1km of radiator section to sufficiently cool the Frisbee with panels comparable to the EF-2K. Which doesn't seem to be practical for KSP. 

As an aside, the radiators integrated into that truss are really cool (no pun intended) and it would be neat to have them as a separate part for use with other engines. Just a thought.

Edited November 21, 2020 by TBenz

[Nertea]

Yeah I was revising the numbers this morning and something seemed weird too, so take my statement as one of intent but maybe not current state

I should note that the radiators are literally just the static microchannel radiators glued onto a common truss so there's nothing really special about them.

[Captain Sierra]

Seeing as the engine produces millions of delta-V with accelerations up to 4 Gs ... I have this burning desire to rename the frisbee to "Blowtorch". The fact it has this laser beam of a plume that stretches something around 150 meters is just gravy.

Currently playtesting in my 1.9 rescaled install. I'll hack together a bare-minimum testing environment if I come across any weirdness. I must say these drives being 5 meter diameter now is going to see a LOT more use of the annular trusses, and I already liked them.

EDIT: Quick note I found, the X-7 Asimov FFRE is asking for 'fission particles' for fuel and there seems to be no way to supply this. Was this supposed to be 'fission pellets' instead? Because those are readily available for other engines.

Edited November 21, 2020 by Captain Sierra

[Starhelperdude]

42 minutes ago, Captain Sierra said:

Seeing as the engine produces millions of delta-V with accelerations up to 4 Gs ... I have this burning desire to rename the frisbee to "Blowtorch". The fact it has this laser beam of a plume that stretches something around 150 meters is just gravy.

Currently playtesting in my 1.9 rescaled install. I'll hack together a bare-minimum testing environment if I come across any weirdness. I must say these drives being 5 meter diameter now is going to see a LOT more use of the annular trusses, and I already liked them.

EDIT: Quick note I found, the X-7 Asimov FFRE is asking for 'fission particles' for fuel and there seems to be no way to supply this. Was this supposed to be 'fission pellets' instead? Because those are readily available for other engines.

Theres is an part switch of the NSWRE Tanks for the fission particles

also the Antimatter Facility uses 'fission targets' as ''fuel'' in the heavy elements mode, but there are not such tanks

https://imgur.com/a/YgQ7dcF I made a big boi wirh the Frisbee named Corona (named after the Corona of the sun not from the human malware), I've never made such a long/big ship before 

But I won't try to fly it, my pc would probably explode

[TBenz]

59 minutes ago, Nertea said:

I should note that the radiators are literally just the static microchannel radiators glued onto a common truss so there's nothing really special about them.

To clarify, I meant the entire radiator and truss structure. You can make a rough approximation using the static microchannel radiators and the annular truss, but it doesn't look as good (in my opinion). 

Spoiler

Personally, I think it would be best to make the engine and the radiator truss two separate parts. It would have a couple benefits, the Frisbee would have a static max heat generation (less confusing for morons like me), the radiators would actually work like other radiators (having their own rejection values and EC use), and you could use the radiator truss for other uses. 

 

Edit: Since others are talking about the fission particles/ pellets thing, I confess to having difficultly keeping  Fi P and Fi Pt straight. It would certainly help to have more clearly distinguishable names and abbreviations. 

Edited November 21, 2020 by TBenz

[WarriorSabe]

2 minutes ago, TBenz said:

Personally, I think it would be best to make the engine and the radiator truss two separate parts. It would have a couple benefits, the Frisbee would have a static max heat generation (less confusing for morons like me), the radiators would actually work like other radiators (having their own rejection values and EC use), and you could use eth radiator truss for other uses. 

I agree, flexibility in radiator options is good.

[Captain Sierra]

10 minutes ago, Starhelperdude said:

Theres is an part switch of the NSWRE Tanks for the fission particles

That is not where I would have expected to look for that, TY.

 

5 minutes ago, TBenz said:

Personally, I think it would be best to make the engine and the radiator truss two separate parts. It would have a couple benefits, the Frisbee would have a static max heat generation (less confusing for morons like me), the radiators would actually work like other radiators (having their own rejection values and EC use), and you could use the radiator truss for other uses. 

My immediate concern with this is part bloat on torchships. You're going to very quickly run into both part count issues and structural rigidity issues if you're not using KJR (which if you're building at this scale, you should be). There's also a realism concern in that the truss length is also there to attenuate the massive gamma radiation, but we can eschew realism a bit for gameplay purposes if we need to.

Edited November 21, 2020 by Captain Sierra

[TBenz]

5 minutes ago, Captain Sierra said:

My immediate concern with this is part bloat on torchships. You're going to very quickly run into both part count issues and structural rigidity issues if you're not using KJR (which if you're building at this scale, you should be).

I would imagine this "radiator truss" part would still have a part switch that takes it out to whatever length is needed to fully cool the Frisbee. So for that use you are only looking at 2 parts, versus 1. And it could help cut down on part count on other ships with high cooling requirements.

8 minutes ago, Captain Sierra said:

There's also a realism concern in that the truss length is also there to attenuate the massive gamma radiation

That's a 'problem' with the 6m radiator variant of the current Frisbee too.

[Nertea]

5 hours ago, Captain Sierra said:

That is not where I would have expected to look for that, TY.

There are now fissionables tanks and fusion tanks to keep part catalogue counts low.

5 hours ago, TBenz said:

Personally, I think it would be best to make the engine and the radiator truss two separate parts. It would have a couple benefits, the Frisbee would have a static max heat generation (less confusing for morons like me), the radiators would actually work like other radiators (having their own rejection values and EC use), and you could use the radiator truss for other uses. 

I don't particularly want to do this ( the split), not the least because it'll just lead to asks for more trusses of different sizes. It also puts a random radiator in this mod which breaks the separation of responsibilities between the packs.

It leads to two-part solutions for single part... things. Not sure why that is better. 

[Captain Sierra]

It makes me happy to once again have a 2-million dV propulsion bus that can fly brachistochrone to Jool and back in 60 days (on 2.5x scale). With its new size & plume, it has a visual absurdity that matches its performance envelope.

Sierra Space Industries claims no responsibility for injury or death resulting directly or indirectly from ignition of torch drives in low orbit. Operator assumes all risks & liabilities.

[WarriorSabe]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

It leads to two-part solutions for single part... things. Not sure why that is better. 

It lets you use that very powerful radiator to cool other things as well, and also lets you use different radiators on that engine if you really wanted for some reason. I could also just see a similarly powerful radiator being added to HeatControl though.

[TBenz]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

It also puts a random radiator in this mod which breaks the separation of responsibilities between the packs.

It could be added to Heat Control. Given how mediocre the stock parts are in SystemHeat already, Heat Control is all but required for FFT anyway.

 

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

It leads to two-part solutions for single part... things. Not sure why that is better.

KSP is all about multi-part solutions. We are given a suite of modular parts that we can interconnect and combine how we want to creatively come up with solutions to the challenges of spaceflight.

No other heat generator has built in radiators. And giving them to the Frisbee means that it could functionally bypass all the System Heat mechanics, which seems strange. Having a separate radiator truss part affords more flexibility to players into how they want to approach cooling not only the Frisbee, but also the other high temperature parts in FFT and beyond.

 

I don't want to come off as being annoyingly argumentative. This is your mod and you get to design it how you want. If you don't want to separate the radiators from the engine that is totally your call. I'm just sharing my thoughts about the matter.