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

[SchrottBot]

17 hours ago, Nertea said:

It might not be the best idea to risk this in your career game right now. It's not very balanced, and may have nasty bugs.

I should have added that my career game already uses one or another WIP mod. I'ts just like in real rocketry. "Oh, wow! It's new an kinda awesome. Let's use it and see what happens!" An for the bugs, honestly, there's a bunch of mods out there in full release that are way more unstable an buggy than your really neat work. *bows and hails*  With tine I got quite experienced in salvaging broken games. KSP = Keep making Security backups Periodically ...  

Anyway for my Kerbals are right at the point of going interplantary and exploding ... err, exploring other worlds, so some experimental drives with unknown properties come very handy for the role-playing element of the game.

 

Cheers

SchrottBot

[Nertea]

16 hours ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Hence why I felt a field report would be helpful. And since you know what caused it, I presume that means there will be a fix in the next test release?

Of course :). 

5 hours ago, SchrottBot said:

I should have added that my career game already uses one or another WIP mod. I'ts just like in real rocketry. "Oh, wow! It's new an kinda awesome. Let's use it and see what happens!" An for the bugs, honestly, there's a bunch of mods out there in full release that are way more unstable an buggy than your really neat work. *bows and hails*  With tine I got quite experienced in salvaging broken games. KSP = Keep making Security backups Periodically ...  

Anyway for my Kerbals are right at the point of going interplantary and exploding ... err, exploring other worlds, so some experimental drives with unknown properties come very handy for the role-playing element of the game.

 

Cheers

SchrottBot

Haha, sure. I still recommend waiting for the next version of the mod (either later today or tomorrow) as I at least went through and made all the costs sane. 

[toric5]

On 8/6/2017 at 11:23 AM, Nertea said:

~snip~

I haven't yet looked at 

• More options for the Heinlein, which probably to some extent means increasing the fuel cost.

if it isnt already, the mass ratio of the NSW tanks should be quite low. boron piping isnt exactly light.

[Nertea]

That's actually one of the main changes I've made :).

[Nertea]

Far Future Technologies 0.2.2

This release has a lot of major improvements to balance, as well as one new engine (fission fragment rocket) and both planned fusion reactors. The whole project is getting close to model completion, just the 3.75m AM tank and the magneto-inertial fusion rocket left as fully new things.

• Added FX-2 Fusion Reactor
  •  2.5m fusion reactor, 4-8 MW power output
• Added FX-3 Fusion Reactor
  •  3.75m fusion reactor, 10-20 MW power output
•  Added Asimov Fission Fragment Rocket
  •  Very low TWR rocket with integrated fuel, very high specific impulse, low heat generation, no EC consumption past charging
• Increased thrust of Z-pinch fusion engine to 375 from 160
  Reduced constant power usage of both Z-Pinch engines by 50%, now 50/65 kW from 100/125 kW
• Reduced constant power usage of tokamak fusion engine from 125 to 75 kW
• Reduced mass of magnetic ICF to 20 from 25 t, reduced heat generation by 2/3
• Reduced mass of Casaba to 11.5 from 15.82, decreased Ablator to 4250
• Tweaked propellant ratios of Casaba so that the consumption of all the Ablator requires exactly 1/2 an antimatter storage ring and 1 small full fission pellet tanks
•  Increased Isp of Microstar to 90950 from 60950, increased thrust to 150 kN from 60 kN
•  Tweaked propellant ratios of Microstar so that 1 full short 3.75m fusion fuel tank takes very close to 1 full antimatter ring to consume
•  Reduced Antimatter consumption of the Dirac by 75% in Medium Density mode
•  Increased thrust of Dirac in Medium Density mode to 190 from 122, increased Isp to 75,250 from 55,000 s
•  Increased thrust of Dirac in High Density mode to 870 from 720
•  Tweaked Ablator use of ablative ICF so that the engine burns through exactly 1 full small pellet tank with its ablator supply
•  Reduced dry mass of ablative ICF to 20 from 30 t, increased Ablator amount to 32000 from 15000
•  Increased power usage of mirror cell fusion engine by 85 kW per segment
•  Decreased specific impulse of NSWR to 5650 from 6730
•  Increased cost of NuclearSaltWater to 8 funds/unit from 4 funds/unit
•  Decreased mass ratio of NuclearSaltWater tanks to 3 from 5
•  Adjusted science costs of all fuel tanks
•  Adjusted part and science costs of all resourcing parts
•  First stab at costs for engine parts
•  Increased the number of FusionPellets in the toggleable tanks by 5x
•  Fixed a bug with the ModuleResourceProfiler's range setting
•  Fixed a localization issue with the VAB ModuleResourceProfiler's info box
•  Fixed a few textures that were still tgas
•  Fixed small nuclear target tank mass and cost when using fusion pellets
•  Fixed missing CTT nodes for some engines

Edited August 10, 2017 by Nertea

[toric5]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

Far Future Technologies 0.2.2

I may or may not get more exited about nertea and roverdudes mod releases than i get about SUQAD ksp updates...

[Captain Sierra]

So I've completed all of my test crafts and tweaking everything for the latest version. That turned into tedium towards the end.... Now I can push all the data into a spreadsheet and properly analyze it. I intend to drop the sheet here along probably with a bundle of my test crafts (I'll list the necessary mods) so that others can analyze the same data. I also need to finish the control crafts which use NF propulsion and Kerbal Atomics engines to offer existing comparisons.

@Nertea So far a lot of the balance changes you made are generally for the better. Antimatter consumption on a lot of the engines I regard as "antimatter-efficient" did go up considerably so they're slightly less AM-efficient now, but 50u of antimatter still only takes 33 days to generate at max level factory so my complaints in that regard are rather heavily undermined.

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, Captain Sierra said:

So I've completed all of my test crafts and tweaking everything for the latest version. That turned into tedium towards the end.... Now I can push all the data into a spreadsheet and properly analyze it. I intend to drop the sheet here along probably with a bundle of my test crafts (I'll list the necessary mods) so that others can analyze the same data. I also need to finish the control crafts which use NF propulsion and Kerbal Atomics engines to offer existing comparisons.

@Nertea So far a lot of the balance changes you made are generally for the better. Antimatter consumption on a lot of the engines I regard as "antimatter-efficient" did go up considerably so they're slightly less AM-efficient now, but 50u of antimatter still only takes 33 days to generate at max level factory so my complaints in that regard are rather heavily undermined.

Factory storage and rates are also something you can play with in the FFTSettings config file... they're also subject to balancing eventually. 

[toric5]

can resource belt be inclined? I sent up an AM collector into kerbin orbit, hoping to get my AM infrastructure in place. looking for antimatter, and i see a peak. adjusting it, i can see what looks like the cross section of a ring, but only originating from one heading. i get no readings pointing the sensor directly away from the equator... also, for the scanning UI, can we get some way of accurately reading the graph? a mouse tool tip a la SCANSAT perhaps?

 

EDIT: wait a minute. roll seems to be affecting the sensor... The AM sensors lens is angled... would a 'controll from here' option be out of the question?

Edited August 11, 2017 by toric5

[MaverickSawyer]

27 minutes ago, toric5 said:

EDIT: wait a minute. roll seems to be affecting the sensor... The AM sensors lens is angled... would a 'controll from here' option be out of the question?

Probably. Faster solution: Get creative!

[toric5]

6 minutes ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Probably. Faster solution: Get creative!

http://imgur.com/LUolucp

done!

 

[Nertea]

50 minutes ago, toric5 said:

can resource belt be inclined? I sent up an AM collector into kerbin orbit, hoping to get my AM infrastructure in place. looking for antimatter, and i see a peak. adjusting it, i can see what looks like the cross section of a ring, but only originating from one heading. i get no readings pointing the sensor directly away from the equator... also, for the scanning UI, can we get some way of accurately reading the graph? a mouse tool tip a la SCANSAT perhaps?

 

The intention is that it's a relative measure. Once I add the noise in (it's config disabled now), it will not be perfectly reliable, which encourages you to get closer.

50 minutes ago, toric5 said:

EDIT: wait a minute. roll seems to be affecting the sensor... The AM sensors lens is angled... would a 'controll from here' option be out of the question?

A bit odd. The 'lens' is the large dome up top, which should point up. Are you not seeing that?

[toric5]

1 minute ago, Nertea said:

The intention is that it's a relative measure. Once I add the noise in (it's config disabled now), it will not be perfectly reliable, which encourages you to get closer.

A bit odd. The 'lens' is the large dome up top, which should point up. Are you not seeing that?

.... im a dummy. i thought the lens was the little knob on the side of the nozzle... everything makes a LOT more sense now.

[Nertea]

Nah that's not bad. I will probably need to find a better way to show players what the up direction is, it's not clear.

[The-Doctor]

Oh these look lovely, they got a kind of Pandorum type vybe but not too much, it's lovely, any imgur album?

[Gryphorim]

Getting some weird behavior with fusion reactors. If set to D/He3, they will not start, despite ample fuel tanks directly connected. They just flash on for a single frame, then reset to charging from 0%. What is it that I am missing?

[Nertea]

 

1 hour ago, Gryphorim said:

Getting some weird behavior with fusion reactors. If set to D/He3, they will not start, despite ample fuel tanks directly connected. They just flash on for a single frame, then reset to charging from 0%. What is it that I am missing?

That's pretty weird, I'll look into it. 

2 hours ago, The-Doctor said:

Oh these look lovely, they got a kind of Pandorum type vybe but not too much, it's lovely, any imgur album?

Read the OP.

[Gryphorim]

Further to my last, having two fusion reactors and a fission reactor (for charging) all on the same vessel causes the fusion reactors to reset as well.

Pure speculation, but maybe the smart output generation is seeing no power requirement from the reactors and shutting them off?

 

[Nertea]

Ok, I think I fixed it... at least the first one, I couldn't repro the second one, so that might have been fixed as a side effect. 

Also added a kinda WIP thing (not well tested) for the Metallic H2 engine, you can now vary the mixture ratio so it uses less LH2 per unit of MH2. Less LH2 puts it closer to the theoretical max of 1700s Isp and increases thrust, but does increase heat generation significantly. More LH2 makes the engine operate cooler, but has performance drawbacks. By default it's set at the same values it used to have. 

FFT 0.2.3

• Fixed a bug where a field for the fusion reactor was visible in the VAB when it shouldn't be
• Fixed some fusion reactor localization bugs
• Fixed an issue where fusion reactors would shut down on startup when using D-He3 mode
• Added new functionality to Metallic H2 engine, can vary mixing ratio. Higher ratio = lower heat and performance, lower ratio = higher heat and performance

[helaeon]

May have a conflict: ModuleFusionReactor is the name used by Angel-125's DSEV for its fusion reactors. It seems that it doesn't cause any major problems other than the right click menu looking odd. It seems that reactors configured for DSEV still work properly though the new buttons like Enable Charging and fuel type do not work (because not configured).

MM patch to add FFT features to DSEV's reactors or conflict requiring module re-naming or neither?

[Nertea]

Oh that's a big problem. For now don't used DSEV and FFT in the same install, even if you don't see ay problems trust me, there are many going on behind the scenes. 

[Sudragon]

On 15/08/2017 at 2:51 AM, Nertea said:

Oh that's a big problem. For now don't used DSEV and FFT in the same install, even if you don't see ay problems trust me, there are many going on behind the scenes. 

Have you mentioned this to @Angel-125?

 

[Hoddd9000]

On 11/08/2017 at 5:38 PM, Nertea said:

Fixed an issue where fusion reactors would shut down on startup when using D-He3 mode

Yeah, I'm still having this issue.

[Nertea]

Need more info, because I fixed it on my end. I tested the following cases

• Both reactors on the pad with both fuel types
• Both reactors on the pad with both fuel types, and an auxiliary 1.25m NFE reactor working at full power

Screenshots of the craft while the event is happening and as much info as you can provide. Log too even though it won't be that useful. 

[Siphonophore]

There's a minor problem; all the FFT engines that require their power banks to be charged will immediately shut off as soon as you activate them, no matter how high the throttle, restarting their charging processes again. I don't know if this is part of the actual mod but tbh it's really bugging me, think you could look into it, Nert? <_>