[DISCUSSION] RemoteTech 2 Lite development

[Daisai]

I keep getting the message : "Flight computer: not yet implemented".

So going by that message its safe to assume that this mod doesnt work yet?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

The mod works fine. The Flight Computer doesn't.

At the moment you need to have an antenna-type of correct range and look-capability and either an LOS to KSC, or to a network that can see KSC in order to control anything that doesn't have a kerbal in it. IoW: Probes.

Like so.

[Daisai]

http://cpdv.home.xs4all.nl/q.craft that is the sattelite i am using and im not even getting any of those lines.

I got them on a orbit of 2868km and one is above ksc.

It has a few mods in the build however it has a comtech 1 and a comtech exp vr 2t.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Daisai

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

http://cpdv.home.xs4all.nl/q.craft that is the sattelite i am using and im not even getting any of those lines.

I got them on a orbit of 2868km and one is above ksc.

It has a few mods in the build however it has a comtech 1 and a comtech exp vr 2t.

Which antenna was "part = RTLongAntenna3_4288448670"?

It says it's enabled and locked in the module data. Can you control the vessel?

I don't recall the ranges of the omnis other than the 500 km 'always active' short range antenna, and the 3,000 km configuration for the commutron 16.

If you have the vessel in focus, in map view you should see icons in the lower-right corner.

[Daisai]

Thats probably the comtech exp because thats the only one you can deploy, the other one is always deployed.

I do have the icons though but nothing happens when you click on them.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

You have no link. Is it the antenna that looks like a block with two small antennae sticking out each end?

If it is... Yeah. You're not getting a connection with that in your current orbit. It only has a range of 500 km, which you're outside of.

The commutron 16 has a range of 3 Mm (3,000 km) which is good for LKO while still being an omni. (But you have to ACTIVATE the communtron 16.)

The dish... is a dish. It has to be activated AND it has to be pointed at something.

A quick break down in case you missed a point. I'm not sure what you know or don't know, so I'll cover everything in bullet points.

Antennae:

- Omnidirectional. (Don't need to be pointed)

- One comes already activated, I don't know about the others.

- Poor range.

Dishes

- Need to be aimed.

- Need to be activated.

- Longer range.

- Dishes are power hungry... mind your power supplies.

Connections:

- Connections must either link to KSC, or to a spacecraft with at least six kerbals onboard. (Field Mission Control, so to speak.)

- Connections require two-way communications, so BOTH spacecraft must have antennae/dishes that can reach each other. With omnis this is easy. With dishes, you essentially dedicate a dish on each craft to a connection.

- Connections are blocked by celestial bodies. Plan a network accordingly.

- All science data must beam back to KSC via the network. Remote field command posts or whatever you want to call them can't act as home base here.

The buttons on the lower right of the map menu are display functions for connections. If you've got those then the mod is up, you just don't have a grasp on proper connections yet.

Pointer: READ the part labels when building your spacecraft. Ranges on your equipment are labelled. Unlike stock KSP where you can kinda just stick whatever antennae you think look good on a ship, these antennae all have unique characteristics. Also, one of the fluff paragraphs points out the antenna the comes already turned on. It's the one I described earlier. (And I think you mentioned it) Looks like a small block with two antennae sticking out each end. Mounts radially. Put one of those on EVERYTHING that isn't operated by a kerbal. That way, you can send a command to IT to turn on the other antennae.

On Commsats: When you build your longer range stuff, I suggest a hub-sat with multiple dishes and antennae. It'll pretty much be a ship in its own right. So plenty of power, batteries, and make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that you dedicate one specific dish to always pointing at kerbin. If you break the connection with kerbin, and you're out of range of omnis, the sat's dead for a long time. (At least until you can get a vessel up that either gets it a new link, or you send up a six-kerb mission control vessel and get it into range of an omni.)

Plan accordingly.

Now, a tip for you from me thanks to math.

Put a commsat array in orbit at 742 km. This is the minimum orbital altitude for a single satellite to see the entirety of the kerbin hemisphere. You'll be able to use the commutron 16 and not require any dishes for ground or inter-satellite communications in this ring. (Maximum distance between sats would be 2,684 km. Give or take a few km for how accurately you can get the orbits to 742... Well inside the 3,000 km range of the commutron 16.) This will act as a good starting array and allow you to operate remote vessels around kerbin without blackouts. 4 is the minimum needed, but I suggest six or so to have overlaps in surface coverage.

[Daisai]

Just wondering though , this does work in sandbox mode or is this for career since you talked about sending science data back to ksc.

I made a commsat now with 4 5 dishes 4 facing each side and one facing to the top also gave it every single antenne i could find, however so far i have not been able to get a connection between 2 of them.

Also when i read the part labels when making the sattelites it doesnt show any ranges only a text which gives a hint as to what the range is.

Also with the remote control of vessels, isnt that already possible ? because that kinda makes me wonder whats the point of this mod.

Thats the one i made, do those dishes work aswell ?

Edited November 13, 2013 by Daisai

[Demon_82]

It works both in career and in sandbox, in both modes not getting signal to KSC prevents you to control your ships, in career also prevents you to send science data.

There's four omni antennas in the latest RT2 download from 7 days ago:

• RTShortAntenna1......Reflectron DP10 (dipole)......automatically activated.........500.000Km range.
  
• RTLongAntenna1.......Communotron 16................manually activated............2.500.000Km range.
  
• RTLongAntenna2.......Communotron 32................manually activated............5.000.000Km range.
  
• RTLongAntenna3.......ComTech EXP-VR-2T............manually activated............3.000.000Km range.
  

It's just a matter of activating antennas as son as you get over that 70Km atmospheric limit to not see them self destroying due to pressure, and calculating at a glance the spread and height of your satellites belt around Kerbin.

Also dishes have a range from 40Mm to 400Gm, and in my game I can see it in every one, the two stock dishes and the four or five included with the plugin.

Finally, you need to have line of sight between satellites, and at least with KSC from one of them. If you have two satellites separated 180º in opposite sides of Kerbin, they can't see themselves.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Demon_82

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Also with the remote control of vessels, isnt that already possible ? because that kinda makes me wonder whats the point of this mod.

With stock KSP, you have remote control of any probe no matter what provided it has power.

Remote Tech is a realism and immersion enhancing mod. It removes the ability for the player to control vehicles unless the player has that vehicle connected to a relay network.

Essentially, the mod is pretending that instead of some godlike being from beyond controlling kerbals and space probes, you're really a kerbal sitting behind a control desk somewhere. So if you can't get a signal to a far away probe, obviously you can't tell it what to do.

Thus, establishing connections is they very core of what Remote Tech is about. Without a relay network, you can't so much as talk to the satellite on the other side of kerbin.

[Daisai]

Nvm got it now , seems i forgot something ^^

Oh well, it happens when you play for like 15 hours today , but now i can't connect to my pretty little sattelites ^^

Didn't like those anyway and gives me a chance to improve them again, i forgot a sattelite facing away from kerbin aswell.

Is it perhapse possible to reactive them through EVA or should i just trash the ones i lost connection with?

Edited November 14, 2013 by Daisai

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Nvm got it now , seems i forgot something ^^

Oh well, it happens when you play for like 15 hours today , but now i can't connect to my pretty little sattelites ^^

Didn't like those anyway and gives me a chance to improve them again, i forgot a sattelite facing away from kerbin aswell.

Is it perhapse possible to reactive them through EVA or should i just trash the ones i lost connection with?

I don't know, but that would be a neat feature to have.

A work around could probably be done with Kerbal Attachment system in bringing up the 'always active' antenna and sticking it on.

[CAPFlyer]

The mod already allows manual-reconnection/reactivation by EVA.

[Deep silence]

Thanks for this must-have addon!

Do you plan to allow changing the dishes target from another vessel like it was possible with the previous version? It is currently boring to switch vessels to connect both points of the transmission.

[Razorcane]

I don't really want to look through all 17 pages of posts to see if these things have been suggested, but I have a few suggestions to make things easier, and more realistic at the same time.

First, data transmission back to Kerbin. I think requiring satellites be connected to Mission Control is kind of limited. In the real world, we have satellite dishes all over the world, relaying information to and from one another. I think it would help if, instead of requiring a network to be connected to KSC, that it just be connected to Kerbin. So, let's say I have a communications outpost on the North Pole. Well, satellites should be able to connect to that and transmit data, instead of forcing the outpost to connect to a satellite and bounce back to KSC. I think that would help a lot.

Second, I don't like the way signals bounce. Instead of requiring a dish for every satellite you want to connect to(for areas where omnis won't reach), it would be much easier to use conic angles, which are already implemented, and use a frequency setting that allows all satellites sharing the same frequency to be able to connect to one another. So instead of having 3 dishes for satellites around Duna, Jool, and Eve, you can have one that connects them all together.

[CAPFlyer]

First, data transmission back to Kerbin. I think requiring satellites be connected to Mission Control is kind of limited. In the real world, we have satellite dishes all over the world, relaying information to and from one another. I think it would help if, instead of requiring a network to be connected to KSC, that it just be connected to Kerbin. So, let's say I have a communications outpost on the North Pole. Well, satellites should be able to connect to that and transmit data, instead of forcing the outpost to connect to a satellite and bounce back to KSC. I think that would help a lot.

Coming soon. He's adding "Ground Relay Stations" which will do that.

Second, I don't like the way signals bounce. Instead of requiring a dish for every satellite you want to connect to(for areas where omnis won't reach), it would be much easier to use conic angles, which are already implemented, and use a frequency setting that allows all satellites sharing the same frequency to be able to connect to one another. So instead of having 3 dishes for satellites around Duna, Jool, and Eve, you can have one that connects them all together.

This is basically what the "Target Planet" mode is for. If you target a planet, the dishes will attempt to connect to any dish pointing back at them that is on/orbiting that body. So, if you have a dish in orbit of Duna and one in orbit of Kerbin and each is pointed at the other planet and they have line-of-sight, they (should) connect automatically.

[BigD145]

In the real world, we have satellite dishes all over the world, relaying information to and from one another.

In the real world we have more than one structure on the entire planet.

[Sandworm]

Lots of comments and suggestions here boil down to "make it easier". Remotetech, as with deadly reentry, as with the life support mods, is meant to add challenge. If kerbin could see everything, if dishes pointed wherever was most convenient, if the flight computer worked perfectly, then what exactly would be the point? Pretty lines on the map view?

And beware of the push for relay stations. That is not realism. There were relay stations early in the AMERICAN space program, but they were very sparce. There were plenty of dead zones. The early Russian program was totally different. The engineers launching sputnik didn't know whether it worked until it completed an orbit and they could hear it's radio signals as it passed overhead.

Establishing a 99.9999% uptime network is not difficult under the current system. It does take planning. It does take time. It does take effort. THAT is the fun.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Sandworm

[Guest]

While relay stations were indeed quite sparse early on, they were there. Both Soviet Union (thanks to it's size) and US (thanks to it's navy) could track and control their satellites from much more than one stations. Not from the start, but this didn't take long. Really, relay stations are definitely a step towards realism. What is unrealistic is requiring people to launch satellites (or manned spacecraft) in order to have any comms at all. A lot of this is, and always was, handled from the ground. Also, rockets had much more complex flight computers than we have in RT. Right now, I don't think you can program a proper launch and simply wait to check if it worked.

[DerekL1963]

Lots of comments and suggestions here boil down to "make it easier". Remotetech, as with deadly reentry, as with the life support mods, is meant to add challenge. If kerbin could see everything, if dishes pointed wherever was most convenient, if the flight computer worked perfectly, then what exactly would be the point? Pretty lines on the map view?

Challenge is one thing. Making things hard because the mod can't do things that are trivial in the real world is different.

And beware of the push for relay stations. That is not realism. There were relay stations early in the AMERICAN space program, but they were very sparce. There were plenty of dead zones. The early Russian program was totally different. The engineers launching sputnik didn't know whether it worked until it completed an orbit and they could hear it's radio signals as it passed overhead.

Yes. relay stations are real and represent realism. Yes, they were sparse and there were dead zones - in the early days. But both the Americans and Soviets did every thing they could to extend the reach of their terrestrial relays as fast as possible.

Establishing a 99.9999% uptime network is not difficult under the current system. It does take planning. It does take time. It does take effort. THAT is the fun.

That's the fun for some over at one end of the bell curve. Others find their fun in something that is realistic and difficult rather than simply difficult because of the things we can't do that are in fact a reasonable way to simulate reality.

[BigD145]

You're both bringing up first world problems. Kerbin has one launch pad with 3 dishes for an entire planet. That's Kerbin's reality. YOU have to build the infrastructure. Will you lay down ground posts just inside the horizon or go into space? Take your pick. You can put command posts anywhere you like and figure out how to get any science back to the only research facility ON THE ENTIRE PLANET in the whole of the entire solar system. Earth had people and infrastructure all over the planet when the V-2 was born. Kerbin does not.

Edited November 24, 2013 by BigD145

[pwlnw]

Can you add feature for delayed dish activation and deactivation? energy savings would be very realistic.

[MrGrazam]

How is the lite version coming along

[NathanKell]

Have you checked Addon Releases in the last month?

[MrGrazam]

Yes I was referring to compatibility with 0.23 release.

[sashan]

Oh, and another feature would be allowing mechjeb inputs bypass signal delay and ignore disconnected state. They are computed on craft, right? Imo this should be true for all the modules, especially landing and ascent guidance, maneuver planner and rendezvous autopilot.