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

[Nertea]

It's that time of year where I'm so burnt out that I ask the internet for direction: https://www.strawpoll.me/42765891. 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

3 minutes ago, Nertea said:

I'm so burnt out

I vote nap 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Spaceman.Spiff

[CDSlice]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

It's that time of year where I'm so burnt out that I ask the internet for direction: https://www.strawpoll.me/42765891. 

Well, since you asked for it...

Personally I would really love for you to something with the science parts. The stock game has so few science options for probes and it would be so nice to have some more restock style science parts. DMagic does have some nice probe parts but the models and textures really clash with the restock style so I don't like using them now. BDB also has some really good probe science parts but then you have to pull in the entire massive mod and I don't always want all of the probes and launchers it has to offer, especially since the entire part pallete becomes stuffefd with BDB parts and it becomes hard to find anything.

The 1.875m station parts would also be really nice since 1.25m parts tend to feel pretty small for things beyond LKO while the 2.5m parts require much larger launchers and transfer stages. However IVAs do seem to be a pain to work with based on your previous comments so maybe not the best project to tackle when feeling burnt out.

A Kerbal Atomics/NF electrical reactor model refresh would be nice, the models are still of extremely high quality compared to most mods but your most recent work is at a whole new level of incredible and it would be nice to see these parts get the same treatment. Not sure if more reactors are needed, especially since there isn't much to use massive amounts of EC in besides some of your electric propulsion engines which already match up pretty well with the reactors you have. 

Expanding/refreshing the NF Spacecraft lander parts would be cool but personally I would rather have the 1.875m station parts since they both involve IVAs and I kind of feel like you won't want to do both near to each other in time.

I don't think Cyrotanks really needs a refresh, the tanks still hold up great IMO. I also don't think that Waterfall SRB plumes are really needed, RealPlume still works good for those and I seem to remember you saying that the technology behind Waterfall won't really work well for SRBs so it sounds like it would be a ton of work to come up with a new method for the SRBs.

Finally, I'd be really sad if you retire from KSP modding since you have easily transformed the game into something far beyond what Squad was able to with your mods but if you feel like it is the right decision for you please do it, no game modding community is worth your mental health.

[Starhelperdude]

I hope the sience stuff, if they are parts, don't combat Dmagics parts, though I have nothing against a sort of replacement with the same/more stuff 

if sience stuff is even meant by that

[KawaiiLucy]

Far Future adds a few awesome-looking "late-game" science experiments, it could be nice to have some for earlier, in contrast to the telescopes from FFT, maybe probe-sized, or more experiments specific to rovers (kinda hot topic atm no?). It could maybe integrate with NF Exploration?

[Spaceman.Spiff]

Not a bad idea.

It probably would go with NFEX

[WarriorSabe]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

It's that time of year where I'm so burnt out that I ask the internet for direction: https://www.strawpoll.me/42765891. 

Whatever the vote comes out as, I think you should think about taking a break for a few months. We've got plenty to go around in the meantime, and you certainly deserve to be able to go without the added stress for a while.

[lemon cup]

2 hours ago, WarriorSabe said:

you certainly deserve to be able to go without the added stress for a while.

This. I have enjoyed every one of your mods since I first started playing KSP. You deserve just as much praise and compensation as the game devs, if not more, and if now is the time for a break or retirement, I wouldn’t bat an eye.

6 hours ago, CDSlice said:

Personally I would really love for you to something with the science parts.

That being said, if bowing out now is not on the table, I would vote this as well.

I have seen DMagic mentioned thus far - specifically my idea (and I don’t know who is managing DM right now) would be a collab with that dev for all new models, just like you nailed with SCANsat a while back 

Edited March 10, 2021 by lemon cup

[SpaceFace545]

Please don't do IVAs or anything that needs IVAS. You've really delivered some awesome content for us and we are really lucky for that but you should just do something easy and straightforward. Maybe SRB plumes but maybe not because you just topped off waterfall. So probably cryo tanks because thats a limited scope.

[Starhelperdude]

when will the voting end?

[Nertea]

Just keep in mind this is just assessment of interest. I'm not using this to definitively say what I'm doing next. 

15 hours ago, KawaiiLucy said:

Far Future adds a few awesome-looking "late-game" science experiments, it could be nice to have some for earlier, in contrast to the telescopes from FFT, maybe probe-sized, or more experiments specific to rovers (kinda hot topic atm no?). It could maybe integrate with NF Exploration?

Yeah science stuff is popular. Probably not doing rovers though, don't have interest in making the one people are specifically interested in. 

19 hours ago, CDSlice said:

A Kerbal Atomics/NF electrical reactor model refresh would be nice, the models are still of extremely high quality compared to most mods but your most recent work is at a whole new level of incredible and it would be nice to see these parts get the same treatment. Not sure if more reactors are needed, especially since there isn't much to use massive amounts of EC in besides some of your electric propulsion engines which already match up pretty well with the reactors you have. 

'more' reactors is probably filling out this thing I posted like.. years ago.

It's really more about cleaning up which reactors belong where in terms of their real output and provided some better options at the low end for non-EP uses. Also better models. 

The problem with KA is that some crazy people made two really nice NTRs that are in BDB and the old models definitely don't match up against that. So I get jealous. 

19 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

I hope the sience stuff, if they are parts, don't combat Dmagics parts, though I have nothing against a sort of replacement with the same/more stuff 

The science stuff would likely be a collab with dmagic as I did with the SCANSat parts, yes. 

19 hours ago, CDSlice said:

I don't think Cyrotanks really needs a refresh, the tanks still hold up great IMO. I also don't think that Waterfall SRB plumes are really needed, RealPlume still works good for those and I seem to remember you saying that the technology behind Waterfall won't really work well for SRBs so it sounds like it would be a ton of work to come up with a new method for the SRBs.

I do have a fairly good technical solution for the smoke stuff but yeah. It'll be some work. 

[Spaceman.Spiff]

6 minutes ago, Nertea said:

'more' reactors is probably filling out this thing I posted like.. years ago.

I like the teeny RTGs

6 minutes ago, Nertea said:

The problem with KA is that some crazy people made two really nice NTRs that are in BDB and the old models definitely don't match up against that. So I get jealou

They are very good yeah. Perhaps they would be good source material 

Fot the future, it would probably be easy to add an RTG NTR which could just be one of the NFE RTG's with the Restock Ant nozzle slapped on it.

9 minutes ago, Nertea said:

The science stuff would likely be a collab with dmagic as I did with the SCANSat parts, yes. 

I got SCANSat recently, and it is epic!

If you work on another mod like that I would be all for it.

10 minutes ago, Nertea said:

I do have a fairly good technical solution for the smoke stuff but yeah. It'll be some work. 

hmmmm..... i'd be interested to see what that is. At the same time, even the Restock plumes without RP looks perfectly good for SRB's. 

[AmateurAstronaut1969]

20 hours ago, CDSlice said:

NF Spacecraft lander parts

I would LOVE lander Parts!
I quite dislike building landers because the stock lander cans are really bad, and the lack of lander specific parts always saddens me (Eg: Descent/Ascent stage tanks/structures and Nice lander Cans)

I Hope that even if it doesn't win, you add it to the list.

(Also SSPRx 1.875 is cool too )

[Starhelperdude]

I hope SSPXr wins, of course I like most options but this one is my favourite of them

[panarchist]

On 3/8/2021 at 2:23 PM, WarriorSabe said:

I don't think it's the looks people are talking about, it's the stats. FFT engines have all their stats reduced so that they don't make good engines for traveling between stars in a timely manner (there's no tanks anywhere near big enough either) - the focus is entirely on interplanetary travel. The thing is, many of the engines would normally be interstellar-grade, so people expect FFT to give you engines that can get you from one star to the next.

NSWR definitely works for close-in interstellar travel, if "timely" is on the order of 10 years Kerbin-time. It's on par with RoverDude's Orion, which took 11 years to get to Cercani when I tried it. When I get around to it, I'm going to see how long it takes the NSWR to do the same trip. (or more - I think the latest version of Cercani is farther out from Kerbol now) The balance point between timely and ridiculous is somewhere around 100km/sec of ΔV. (IMO)

[WarriorSabe]

6 hours ago, panarchist said:

NSWR definitely works for close-in interstellar travel, if "timely" is on the order of 10 years Kerbin-time. It's on par with RoverDude's Orion, which took 11 years to get to Cercani when I tried it. When I get around to it, I'm going to see how long it takes the NSWR to do the same trip. (or more - I think the latest version of Cercani is farther out from Kerbol now) The balance point between timely and ridiculous is somewhere around 100km/sec of ΔV. (IMO)

Those I would not consider interstellar distances. I was referring to standard interstellar distances, like in GU or the Light Levels mods - you need megameters per second to get there on similar timescales

[MonkeyCan'tDock]

If you are thinking about doing science, why not make each payload on the racks in Near Future Props an experiment, it gives us another reason to be inside the spacecraft or use FreeIVA. Have someone whip up a UI that looks like the slots they use on the ISS rack, then all we do is fill it in in the VAB.

The ISS documents are full of stuff about the racks. This link is for two NTRS documents about how the racks work and experiments onboard them.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140011636

There are plenty of other documents there, I've seen them going back to the Space Station Freedom days when there was a central U.S. laboratory to go with the ESA and JAXA (NASDA) ones.

Hope it helps, definitely an idea I've never seen someone try in Kerbal, could be exciting.

[Gryphorim]

On 3/11/2021 at 3:16 AM, Nertea said:

Just keep in mind this is just assessment of interest. I'm not using this to definitively say what I'm doing next. 

Yeah science stuff is popular. Probably not doing rovers though, don't have interest in making the one people are specifically interested in. 

'more' reactors is probably filling out this thing I posted like.. years ago.

It's really more about cleaning up which reactors belong where in terms of their real output and provided some better options at the low end for non-EP uses. Also better models. 

The problem with KA is that some crazy people made two really nice NTRs that are in BDB and the old models definitely don't match up against that. So I get jealous. 

The science stuff would likely be a collab with dmagic as I did with the SCANSat parts, yes. 

I do have a fairly good technical solution for the smoke stuff but yeah. It'll be some work. 

Have you seen the "Apple" concept for what looks like a flat panel RTG? https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2021_Phase_I/Atomic_Planar_Power_for_Lightweight_Exploration/

Maybe you could loosely base an RTG on it, giving it the form factor of a solar panel or radiator, but functioning as any other RTG?

[golkaidakhaana]

A range of smaller RTG s like the image describes would be welcome , alternative RTG s are something that KSP is sorely lacking . Also a refresh of Dmagic parts , this needs to happens !!!!

[Nertea]

On 3/14/2021 at 2:43 PM, Gryphorim said:

Have you seen the "Apple" concept for what looks like a flat panel RTG? https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2021_Phase_I/Atomic_Planar_Power_for_Lightweight_Exploration/

Maybe you could loosely base an RTG on it, giving it the form factor of a solar panel or radiator, but functioning as any other RTG?

Hey that's interesting!

On 3/12/2021 at 11:43 PM, MonkeyCan'tDock said:

If you are thinking about doing science, why not make each payload on the racks in Near Future Props an experiment, it gives us another reason to be inside the spacecraft or use FreeIVA. Have someone whip up a UI that looks like the slots they use on the ISS rack, then all we do is fill it in in the VAB.

The ISS documents are full of stuff about the racks. This link is for two NTRS documents about how the racks work and experiments onboard them.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20140011636

There are plenty of other documents there, I've seen them going back to the Space Station Freedom days when there was a central U.S. laboratory to go with the ESA and JAXA (NASDA) ones.

Hope it helps, definitely an idea I've never seen someone try in Kerbal, could be exciting.

Oof, nah. So much tons of work in that, and it's all IVA based work, which is pretty miserable and tends to be used by only a small fraction of players.

[Nertea]

[RyanRising]

8 hours ago, Nertea said:

Hey that's interesting!

Oof, nah. So much tons of work in that, and it's all IVA based work, which is pretty miserable and tends to be used by only a small fraction of players.

I’m always a little saddened to hear how unpleasant working on IVA spaces is - they add so, so much to the experience of using the parts, and the game wouldn’t be the same without the ability to look out the window and appreciate your accomplishments from the scale of your crew. But since making them is bad enough that every time they’re mentioned it comes accompanied with a frowny face, it’s hard to say that (IMO) the best part of having crewed modded parts is worth it. It’s a wonder we get any mods with them at all.

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

ooh, pretty.

[Starhelperdude]

1 hour ago, RyanRising said:

I’m always a little saddened to hear how unpleasant working on IVA spaces is - they add so, so much to the experience of using the parts, and the game wouldn’t be the same without the ability to look out the window and appreciate your accomplishments from the scale of your crew. But since making them is bad enough that every time they’re mentioned it comes accompanied with a frowny face, it’s hard to say that (IMO) the best part of having crewed modded parts is worth it. It’s a wonder we get any mods with them at all.

ooh, pretty.

yep

[Spaceman.Spiff]

7 hours ago, Nertea said:

Have you decided on scope for this expansions yet?

How many/what kind of parts are you planning?

[Misguided Kerbal]

8 hours ago, Nertea said:

From what I can tell, this seems to be (from left to right): Airlock, Habitation, Science Lab, and Utility. Am I right?