[1.02] BioMass - Renewable Bio Fuel and Supplemental Life Support Modules

[Sakata]

Hey I noticed my 'test' Station ended up on http://ducttapeeinstein.com/ksp-biomass-in-the-wild/

Pretty cool

[seanth]

An update:

I'm feeling really good about the progress with BioMass over the past few days. For example, the part I showed in the video has been extended to recover other gasses from the atmosphere, such as methane(i.e. kethane), hydrogen, helium(i.e. xenon), etc. Most of these gasses are fractions of a percent of Earth's atmosphere, and since I assume Kerbin is the same, it take many hours to recover the rarer gasses. If you are patient, or if you make a gas recovery farm with lots of these devices, you can recover things fairly rapidly.

It even recovers moisture, now. So now you, too, can be a moisture farmer. In space.

Another part people have not seen yet is a composter part, which takes in various biological materials, including waste material from life support mods such as TAC, and breaks them down, ultimately into CO2 and H2 or Kethane and O2. The tricky bit is that, in the presence of O2, the Kethane will revert back to CO2 and H2. This means that if you want to recover Kethane, you need to run an O2 compressor to constantly remove the O2 and turn it into oxidizer.

Are people interested in more teaser videos, or would people rather we wait and make tutorial videos?

[JeffreyCor]

I'd prefer tutorial videos, the teasers just make me go nuts about having to wait for the update

[BigD145]

Tutorials first. Then you can go nuts.

[therealcrow999]

Tutorials.

[Sakata]

Hey Roboto/Sean, did you guys ever find that time acceleration bug and beat it to death?

[seanth]

Hey Roboto/Sean, did you guys ever find that time acceleration bug and beat it to death?

I _think_ the bug is Squad level. In general, I find the various modules do not work so great at high time acceleration. For example, in my experience, solar panels and batteries act very oddly at high acceleration.

[Sakata]

Hrmm. So I guess any time that time acceleration is used, we'll most likely be out of biomass. Meh.

Wonder if there is a way to detect time acceleration and automagically disable certain parts of the mod so that bio-mass death doesn't occur.

[seanth]

Hrmm. So I guess any time that time acceleration is used, we'll most likely be out of biomass. Meh.

Wonder if there is a way to detect time acceleration and automagically disable certain parts of the mod so that bio-mass death doesn't occur.

Not every time. I have found that 50x acceleration is ok. The exact outputs are not correct, but there are serious rounding errors when you are accelerating.

However, we have new mechanisms in place where you can "reseed" greenhouses if you run out of biomass. We'll hopefully have a new release ready very soon, including some short video showcases/tutorials.

[Roboto]

Hrmm. So I guess any time that time acceleration is used, we'll most likely be out of biomass. Meh.

Wonder if there is a way to detect time acceleration and automagically disable certain parts of the mod so that bio-mass death doesn't occur.

yea as seanth said, the seed resource he added in will solve this in most cases. We also have a couple scripts we are looking at that do a better job of checking resource amounts, allow us to add half-assed conditionals to parts cfgs and the like, but its a bit finicky. We'll have everything in the best state as possible when we drop the entire mod, and from there we'll be improving things as needed.

Thanks for the compliments on the models and all the involvement to by the way! Much appreciated and keeps me motivated. o7

[Sakata]

Not a problem. I have gotten to a point that I can barely play default KSP now, as some of the rockets I used to design were so absolutely ridiculously large that it would kill my PC, and with mods my part numbers have gone down by several orders of magnitude, allowing me to build more complex and survivable ships that aren't as Kraken-summoning as default. Also it lets me not have to have crazy refueling missions that had to burn tons of dV to reach and match existing ships that ended up running out of fuel. And better yet with the BioMass mod, I can park stations at various planets/moons, and not have to worry much about resupply at all, so I can not worry about micromanaging every little thing

Now all we need is some form of AI-control that can do basic supply missions on its own Similar to the Egosoft X series.

If you want me to play guinea pig some more and see if I can find any more issues, I officially offer myself as a guinea-kerbal, in the name of SCIENCE!

[seanth]

Now all we need is some form of AI-control that can do basic supply missions on its own Similar to the Egosoft X series.

You might want to check out the k-os plugin http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/47399-kOS-Scriptable-Autopilot-System-0-9. It allows you to do some really amazing automation things. There are some good youtube tutorials as well.

[seanth]

Mmmmmm. BioCake

Just testing converting greenhouse grown biomass into food for kerbals.

[JeffreyCor]

Might there be an addition of an EVA repair function so broken greenhouses can be fixed instead of having to be replaced?

[seanth]

Might there be an addition of an EVA repair function so broken greenhouses can be fixed instead of having to be replaced?

As far as I know, a greenhouse only breaks when it explodes. I'm afraid there is no repairing that. Hopefully you kept the receipt and it's still under warranty.

Or maybe I misunderstood your question.

[JeffreyCor]

I have a broken Food Greenhouse that is not exploded. If it was I wouldn't be able to see the "broken" status

[seanth]

I have a broken Food Greenhouse that is not exploded. If it was I wouldn't be able to see the "broken" status

Hmmm. Roboto will have to weigh in on this. Paging Roboto. Roboto, please come to the front desk.

[Roboto]

I have a broken Food Greenhouse that is not exploded. If it was I wouldn't be able to see the "broken" status

I've not seen this happen before. I will take a look at it ASAP. /shuffles off to his office

[Jdav232]

Is there a good tutorial on this mod? I keep trying to figuring it out, but I am not having luck.

My biggest conundrum is with the MicroBiome Module and getting wastewater and such. Is the life support mod required? If so that's fine. I may have to disable remote tech. I'm not that good yet

I really want to use this, I just cant find an updated video or text explanation. Any links?

Cheers

[Roboto]

Is there a good tutorial on this mod? I keep trying to figuring it out, but I am not having luck.

My biggest conundrum is with the MicroBiome Module and getting wastewater and such. Is the life support mod required? If so that's fine. I may have to disable remote tech. I'm not that good yet

I really want to use this, I just cant find an updated video or text explanation. Any links?

Cheers

While having a life support mod installed does help balance things for you, they are not required. The MicroBiome will consume waste from other mods optionally, but if they are not present, it relies on assumed waste created by kerbals, the plant life cycle etc... Keep in mind the microbiome will produce nutrients at almost exactly the same rate as one greenhouse will consume. So depending on your build, you may be consuming too fast (more greenhouses than one microbiome can handle alone), or it appears to be doing nothing because the greenhouse is consuming them at the same rate.

After playing with it a little more let me know how it goes. If you still have issues, let me know specifically what you are expecting vs what you're seeing and ill let you know what is happening.

Thanks for playing our mod!

tutorial: not yet, but there probably will be pretty soon. Just have to clear our desks a bit. Seanth is working on some vids for the juiced up science version currently, and i'm going to try to work up a cool info-graphic.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Roboto
tutorial update.

[JeffreyCor]

Figures I'd stumble across something totally wacky If it helps any, I was trying to add on the greenhouse for my moon base and dropped it (oops). I held my breath expecting a boom, but when there was no boom, my Kerbals all said "yeay!" When it came time to being it online, I couldn't open the shutters and the status on it says broken. I even sent a Kerbal out to try to do a repair which did look very amusing seeing the little guy standing on top of it.

[Roboto]

Figures I'd stumble across something totally wacky If it helps any, I was trying to add on the greenhouse for my moon base and dropped it (oops). I held my breath expecting a boom, but when there was no boom, my Kerbals all said "yeay!" When it came time to being it online, I couldn't open the shutters and the status on it says broken. I even sent a Kerbal out to try to do a repair which did look very amusing seeing the little guy standing on top of it.

There are ways to make it unbroken, but its sort of cheating. There is a file in your kerbal install where your active ships are stored. you could go into that file and set its state back to ...Deployed? i think?

I have discovered why this happened and how to fix it, but i will have to code in a function so you can fix them when on EVA.

Explanation: The greenhouses use the stock solar panel module to simulate photosynthesis and to detect sung light direction. A built in "feature" of solar panels is that they break. Like a dope, I left all the greenhouses set to breakable, without giving you a way to fix them. So really, you debugged a mistake of mine! Congrats and thanks!

[JeffreyCor]

I'm glad I was of help! I'm expecting to have to start a new came when .23 is released so I'll be rebuilding my base at that time anyway, so on the balance the improvement of finding this far outweighs the problem. I'm looking forward to the next update of this great mod

[Roboto]

ok folks! Git hub has been updated with the latest and greatest version. Jump on over there and download it, we're looking forward to the feedback!

Remember, the spaceport version and the git hub version are currently two different branches.

Installing both simultaneously will most likely result in total protonic reversal.

You've been warned.

Now, Go Download It!!

Edited December 13, 2013 by Roboto

[seanth]

Minor fixes to the parts that store seeds and food. If you downloaded the github version before 13 Dec 17:00Mountain Time, you should probably DL it again. Sorry for the screwup.