Jump to content

[1.1.3] AntennaRange 1.11.4 - Enforce and Encourage Antenna Diversity

toadicus

By toadicus
in KSP1 Mod Releases

 Share

Recommended Posts

toadicus

toadicus

Posted
Posted (edited)

antennarange_network.png

antennarange_owk-noui-med.png

antennarange_owk-comm16-med.pngantennaranage_owk-dts-med.pngantennarange_owk-comm88-med.png

Ever wanted to use one of those cool looking dish antennas, but the engineer in you just wouldn't let you spend the extra power and weight? Well, now you can force yourself to use them! Designed as a drop-in replacement for ModuleDataTransmitter, AntennaRange handles range-finding, power scaling, and data scaling for antennas during science transmission. Its functionality varies with three tunables: nominalRange, maxPowerFactor, and maxDataFactor, set in .cfg files. In general, the antennae are tuned as follows:

  • Communotron 16 - Suitable up to Kerbalsynchronous Orbit
  • Comms DTS-M1 - Suitable throughout the Kerbin subsystem
  • Communotron 88-88 - Suitable throughout the Kerbol system.

What It Does

AntennaRange specifies a nominal range at which the antennas work exactly as prescribed in Squad's .cfg files. Below that range, the data packet size increases up to a maximum, effectively increasing bandwidth and decreasing power cost. Above that range, packet size stays floored at Squad's value, and packet power costs increase. When power cost gets too high, the antenna no longer functions. Both values scale with the square of the distance. Finally, transmitter scoring has been adjusted so that the science subsystems will prefer the cheapest antenna in terms of charge/data.

AntennaRange also provides simple relaying support. That is, if your ship has a short range antenna, but is in range of a longer range antenna that can communicate back to Kerbin, it will do so. At this time, no attempt is being made to model electric use on the relay vessels; this mechanic is intended to feel rewarding for those interested in putting together a relay system (say, a flat dish antenna in orbit of Minmus so your probes can just use whips, or a big dish in high Jool orbit with a few flat dishes in low orbits, so once again your probes can use whips). Because of the limited number of antenna parts and because this mechanic is intended to be optional, range is not additive: if you want to use a whip from far away, you need a bigger antenna within whip range.

AntennaRange has a small handful of optional features to enhance gameplay: a line of sight requirement, a probe connection requirement, and a "fixed power cost" requirement. As its name implies, the line of sight requirement requires that antennas must have an unobstructed line of effect from their origin to their target, whether that's Kerbin or another relay. Only a planet or a moon can block line of sight at this time. The probe connection requirement will disable control of unmanned craft whenever no connection can be made from the active craft to Kerbin. Finally, the fixed power cost makes the "long range" penalty mirror the "short range" benefit -- slowing down data transmission instead of increasing power cost. This makes it simpler to design probes that will remain controllable while transmitting, at the cost of using up more of your time to do it.

antennarange_icon_expo_med.png

What It Does Not Do

AntennaRange does not pretend to be any sort of "realistic" communication system. If you're looking for that sort of thing, look in to RemoteTech or kOS or something similar.

Don't Forget

If you have craft outside of Kerbalsynchronous orbit with nothing but the whip antenna, they will be unable to transmit data until they get closer. Beware when installing this mod with an active career!

Documentation

There is a wiki at GitHub that describes the various options and offers some technical documentation for patch authors.

[wiki]

Compatibility Patches

Users are welcome and encouraged to submit patches for use with other antenna mods!  The official place to keep track of ModuleManager patches is at the wiki:

[compatibility patches]

DOWNLOADS

SpaceDock: [zip]
Not SpaceDock: [zip] [tar.gz] [tar.xz]

CHARITY:

Do you like what you see here so much that you can't imagine downloading it without first parting with your hard-earned money? If so, this specially-crafted PayPal donation button will help you to take the currency of your choice and make it my money instead of your money. More seriously though: donations are 100% optional and entirely at your own discretion. If you do choose to donate, I'll appreciate it!

btn_donate_LG.gif

INSTALL: 

1. Unpack archive into /path/to/KSP_folder/.
2. ???
3. Profit!

 

USAGE: 

* Add Squad's antennae to your ships as normal.  Just make sure you use the right one(s) for the job!

 

CHANGELOG:

  Reveal hidden contents

LICENSE:

OP screenshots provided by ObsessedWithKSP; used by permission.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by toadicus
Updated to 1.11.4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
toadicus

toadicus

Posted
  • Author
Posted

In that this mod is generally designed to limit range, and in that RemoteTech changes a great deal about the communications infrastructure, my guess is "no". I don't use RemoteTech and I haven't tested this with it in any way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MedievalNerd

MedievalNerd

Posted
Posted
  Pigbear said:
rather useless for those that land (more efficent :P) but still a nice mod.

Actually there is 'no point' in bringing back science right now. I was under the impression that if you had 10 data units and could only transmit 70%, that 30% would be 'lost'. But it's not. You can just spam the antenna use and boom, it's done. I'm not 100% sure I understand the subtleties of this mod, but perhaps it addresses this in a way?

To balance the whole stock data transmission they need to either have science instruments to be single-use.(Making the % of data loss relevant as you'd have to come back to get the % lost)

Or, if you would permanently lose that data, THEN it would be a gamble. Do I go back and get 100% or sacrifice X% of my data. (This would deal with transmission spamming)

It's nice to see more mods that want to deal with balance.

Cheers,

Link to comment
Share on other sites
toadicus

toadicus

Posted
  • Author
Posted
  MedievalNerd said:
Actually there is 'no point' in bringing back science right now. I was under the impression that if you had 10 data units and could only transmit 70%, that 30% would be 'lost'. But it's not. You can just spam the antenna use and boom, it's done. I'm not 100% sure I understand the subtleties of this mod, but perhaps it addresses this in a way?

This mod does not address the spammability of science points from transmitters or the science values delivered in any event; it only limits the range of the antennas in order to require the use of the bigger ones, and rewards the use of smaller antennas on more-local craft.

In Wednesday's dev notes, HarvesteR laid out some changes to science transmission that should address the spamming problem. I don't know if that's slated for 0.23 or 0.22.1, but either way I'm writing off that particular problem as "Squad is already fixing it."

Link to comment
Share on other sites
toadicus

toadicus

Posted
  • Author
Posted
  KerbMav said:
Sweet.

Can you also make them not-retracting after transmitting?

I would not even bother if I had to deploy the antennas manually, if they only stopped folding back up after transmitting ...

Unfortunately no; at least not directly. Squad's transmission code handles that, and it's all in a few private methods and subclasses. I can't override them, and I can't readily duplicate their functionality with confidence because a lot of the logic is obscured in the assembly.

With a bit of futzing around, I could probably make the antenna re-extend after the transmit logic retracts it, if it was extended in the beginning. Would that be close enough for your purposes?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
toadicus

toadicus

Posted
  • Author
Posted
  KerbMav said:
Not really to be honest - it is not only the look of the craft, but if you start transmitting another report while the antenna is retracting, the report is only sent when the next (third) transmitting starts.

Yeah, that's out of my hands. All of the code about that, from queuing to transmitting to delivering science, is locked up. I'd need to entirely re-implement the data transmitter to fix that, and that has potentially dire implications about science production if I get it wrong. ;)

You should file a bug about that specific behavior; data that's been flagged for transmitting should transmit automatically when it's reached in the queue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
KerbMav

KerbMav

Posted
Posted

Remote Tech caught me off guard when launching my first unmanned probe without an antenna ... as well as its changes to the antennas, making them use energy whenever they are deployed ... but also that the antennas have to be deployed manually to transmit science - and that they do not automatically retract when finished.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...
JeffreyCor

JeffreyCor

Posted
Posted

Great idea with wonderful implementation! Thank you for your work :)

Future version idea, maybe a relay so for example if you have a satellite around Mun with a small half dish (midrange) antenna or two, a probe or rover on the surface could use a whip antenna. Essentially sending the data to the satellite then the satellite sends it to KSC but not have the complexity of control as RemoteTech has.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
CaptRobau

CaptRobau

Posted
Posted

It's a shame that I never came across this mod before, looks awesome. Hope 0.23 won't break it. Would second JeffreyCor's idea of adding simple relays. Because now there's no choice. Go there, you need that antenna. If you have relays you can choose to either build a lander with a whip antenna (easier to use than the bigger ones) and an orbiter with a dish, or you can build the lander around the large communications array but at the advantage of not needing a separate orbiter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
toadicus

toadicus

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

I've done some quick testing, and from the looks of things, AntennaRange is fully compatible with KSP 0.23.0 and ModuleManager 1.5. Enjoy!

  czokletmuss said:
Simple yet elegant mod which finally makes you use those antennas for reasons other than purely esthethic. Awesome :)

Glad you like it! I've always enjoyed reading your AARs. :)

  JeffreyCor said:
Great idea with wonderful implementation! Thank you for your work :)

Future version idea, maybe a relay so for example if you have a satellite around Mun with a small half dish (midrange) antenna or two, a probe or rover on the surface could use a whip antenna. Essentially sending the data to the satellite then the satellite sends it to KSC but not have the complexity of control as RemoteTech has.

  CaptRobau said:
It's a shame that I never came across this mod before, looks awesome. Hope 0.23 won't break it. Would second JeffreyCor's idea of adding simple relays. Because now there's no choice. Go there, you need that antenna. If you have relays you can choose to either build a lander with a whip antenna (easier to use than the bigger ones) and an orbiter with a dish, or you can build the lander around the large communications array but at the advantage of not needing a separate orbiter.

Hmm, I do like this idea. I'll do a quick investigation this week, hopefully, and see if I can just knock it out quickly, or if it needs to take a backseat to a couple other projects I've got going on. Thanks for the feedback!

Edited by toadicus
Link to comment
Share on other sites
This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...