[1.1.3] AntennaRange 1.11.4 - Enforce and Encourage Antenna Diversity

[toadicus]

@toadicus Some of the ranges may need cut alittle but as, I used my RT2 ranges for Aies and is there away to have dish and antenna range displayed in void?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ao2gojlnxaai02z/AIES_AntennaRange_Mod_1.cfg

EDIT and lol , I think, I cut the range on the commDish by half.

EDIT 2 Mix mods that had around 1 antenna or dish https://www.dropbox.com/s/if7ewn70dq7u3yb/Mix_Mods_AntennaRange.cfg

AND Fasa https://www.dropbox.com/s/u1aelsk54mkfb9d/FASA_AntennaRange.cfg

EDIT 3 And if you want to use RT2 parts with this mod https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwv6pd5ghnymsq2/RT2_AntennaRange_mod.cfg

Thanks for sharing, MeCripp.

The default ranges are the way they are because originally I had no relay options and Squad only provides three antennae, so the range spans were necessarily large. Since AntennaRange is a "stock improvement" mod, I need to keep the default values pretty similar to what they are now. That said, I encourage interested parties to try out your configs for other mods! Increasing antenna diversity is definitely within the spirit of AntennaRange.

[Gaius]

The new update is working well, even immediately after undocking a ship from the station it'll be using as a relay, thanks much for that fix! I have noticed one little oddity, however...

I have a probe sitting on the surface of Minmus with the shortest range antenna, with a relay sat orbiting Minmus with a longer range antenna. When I first switch to the ship, or immediately after an F9 reload, if I run an experiment and select transmit, it takes a while and uses a large amount of power. However, if I first right-click the antenna and look at the range stats (doing nothing else other than looking), then run and transmit an experiment, it goes much more quickly and takes less power.

I also have a space station orbiting Mun, and a lander that undocks to go down to collect science. Similar situation: if I undock and immediately run an experiment and transmit, it takes a while and uses a lot of power. If I first right-click the antenna, then transmit the experiment (to the station 8m away), it goes much more quickly and uses much less power. Somehow, the mere viewing of the ranges under the right-click menu improves the performance of the antennae.

But, other than that little oddity, everything's working great now. Thanks again.

[toadicus]

@toadicus I not that far in my new career to get the long range dishes out there to test them but by looking at them in VAB looks like, I got the range way to high is the maxrange just that ? so maybe change the range so the max come's out to what,I have them set at, so you have to setup a network ? any thoughts from anyone ?

I've actually posted on this issue some before, but here's a quick summary of my current thoughts:

In general, Squad's game rewards play by enabling the player to voluntarily raise the complication level. There's no reason to build a communications satellite or a space station or an airplane in the stock game, but if you want to and think that's fun, go for here and take their blessing. AntennaRange was conceived -- again, in general -- under a similar mindset. Honestly, I wrote the first versions specifically because if I didn't have a rule making me use the bigger communication pieces, I'd never do it, and I think it's a shame that the base game doesn't have any system for enforcing that.

That said, I wanted AntennaRange to be primarily rewarding, not punishing; that is, I want the player to feel like the efficiency of their space program has been increased by using the parts "right". That's why the parts feature a data speedup when you're below the nominal range; it is literally a real-time reward for playing the game in the way that I (personally) think is more realistic and more fun.

The relay feature was intended as a continuation of this philosophy. If people don't want to build a relay network, and just want to send Communotron 88-88s everywhere they go, that's fine. But if they do, they get rewarded: expensive data transmissions from the surface of Eeloo can happen almost as quickly as if you were in low Kerbin orbit. In my opinion, this allows for and (I hope) fosters creative design in your spacecraft and space programs, without explicitly requiring people to spend a lot of real time setting up complicated communications networks in the name of realism.

Now, with all this in mind, I've left these values configurable for a reason, and using ModuleManager (with thanks once against to (the awesome) Ialdabaoth and sarbian) affords a lot of flexibility in how we move things forward. When I was looking over the AEIS parts it occurred to me that it might be a lot of fun to talk to carmics about distributing his antenna parts with some custom AntennaRange configs as an optional "hard mode" pack. I'm also very interested to hear thoughts from those interested here: what do you think should be the "next step" for AntennaRange?

As a qualifier: I've said before and will say again that I'm not interested in developing a comprehensive replacement / substitute for RemoteTech.

The new update is working well, even immediately after undocking a ship from the station it'll be using as a relay, thanks much for that fix! I have noticed one little oddity, however...

I have a probe sitting on the surface of Minmus with the shortest range antenna, with a relay sat orbiting Minmus with a longer range antenna. When I first switch to the ship, or immediately after an F9 reload, if I run an experiment and select transmit, it takes a while and uses a large amount of power. However, if I first right-click the antenna and look at the range stats (doing nothing else other than looking), then run and transmit an experiment, it goes much more quickly and takes less power.

I also have a space station orbiting Mun, and a lander that undocks to go down to collect science. Similar situation: if I undock and immediately run an experiment and transmit, it takes a while and uses a lot of power. If I first right-click the antenna, then transmit the experiment (to the station 8m away), it goes much more quickly and uses much less power. Somehow, the mere viewing of the ranges under the right-click menu improves the performance of the antennae.

But, other than that little oddity, everything's working great now. Thanks again.

Sounds like I need to revisit the sequence of events that follow a "Transmit Now" click from an experiment dialog.

[Felbourn]

For some reason, this mod breaks Simple Part Organizer, which I just can't play without...

It does exactly what the screenshot shows - the mods selection menu doesn't pop up. Here is the KSP log-> https://www.dropbox.com/s/te3bck4qpnjecqv/KSP.log

Oh, and I declare myself former king of the lurkers.

(Edit) https://www.dropbox.com/s/d76hianw453plsb/output_log.txt

Does this fix it?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ubrzx9ox9hhlnj/SPO-0.23.5.1.zip

[BigD145]

This is a nice and simple alternative to RemoteTech. Good work.

[toadicus]

Does this fix it?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ubrzx9ox9hhlnj/SPO-0.23.5.1.zip

Looks to have fixed it!

[NJC2]

I quickly browsed through all the posts, so forgive me if I missed this. Does this mod take into account line of sight when transmitting? If not, have you thought about adding that?

I started using Remote Tech 2 in .23 when I started a career mode because I like that it gives you a reason to launch communication satellites, and having to have LOS means setting up networks of satellites to get coverage. I like to control my spacecraft though, so I don't like the signal delay (which thankfully can be turned off) and not being able to control unmanned craft when losing LOS. The way I see it, I'm the spacecraft's computer, and I still work when out of contact. However I should still lose control if I go out of range because without contact you can't send it commands. I know that doesn't make sense to not lose control when out of contact due to LOS but not out of range, but think of it like this: If a spacecraft is going to pass behind a planet and you need to make a burn to get in orbit, you would transmit a command for it to perform that burn before losing contact, but if your craft goes out of range, you can no longer send it commands.

If this mod requires LOS between antennas, this would be an ideal Remote Tech 2 replacement for me.

[toadicus]

I quickly browsed through all the posts, so forgive me if I missed this. Does this mod take into account line of sight when transmitting? If not, have you thought about adding that?

I started using Remote Tech 2 in .23 when I started a career mode because I like that it gives you a reason to launch communication satellites, and having to have LOS means setting up networks of satellites to get coverage. I like to control my spacecraft though, so I don't like the signal delay (which thankfully can be turned off) and not being able to control unmanned craft when losing LOS. The way I see it, I'm the spacecraft's computer, and I still work when out of contact. However I should still lose control if I go out of range because without contact you can't send it commands. I know that doesn't make sense to not lose control when out of contact due to LOS but not out of range, but think of it like this: If a spacecraft is going to pass behind a planet and you need to make a burn to get in orbit, you would transmit a command for it to perform that burn before losing contact, but if your craft goes out of range, you can no longer send it commands.

If this mod requires LOS between antennas, this would be an ideal Remote Tech 2 replacement for me.

At this point no, it doesn't. I'll consider adding that as an optional feature.

[Zeroignite]

So, couple thoughts:

First, does KSP do ok if you set the packet size to fractional Mits? I'd kind of like to see five transmissions-per-second regardless of real bandwidth.

Secondly, here's a plugin request: AntennaThrottle

It kind of sucks when you bottom out your batteries on a larger-than-expected transmission. Not only is being out of power damn awkward, it's annoying to see the warning message every time the antenna does get a packet through. What I'd love is an in-game slider to throttle antenna bandwidth on-the-fly, limiting it to the selected electricity/second rate.

An example use-case: My solar-powered Joolian probe just finished an aerocapture, and now has a bunch of data to transmit. There's a few hundred Mits of data sitting in storage, but the probe is only packing a couple hundred units of electricity and generating only 2E/s. In this case, I'd set the slider to throttle antennae at 2E/s and start the transmission, knowing it'll take a while but happily never running out of power. If I suddenly get eclisped by Tylo (the jerk), downthrottle all the way to 0E/s, temporarily "pausing" the transmission without any actual data loss incurred from a transmission abort.

Does that sound doable, or even a good idea?

[toadicus]

So, couple thoughts:

First, does KSP do ok if you set the packet size to fractional Mits? I'd kind of like to see five transmissions-per-second regardless of real bandwidth.

I'm not in a position to test this in the here and now, but my guess is it'd do just fine. You might want to make sure they can multiply together into something rational (not whole, but rational), but even that's probably unnecessary. If you want to have a go at it yourself, open up AntennaRange.cfg and add new values for packetInterval and packetSize yourself, e.g.:

@PART[longAntenna]
{
	@MODULE[ModuleDataTransmitter]
	{
		@name = ModuleLimitedDataTransmitter

		@packetInterval = 0.2	// 5 packets per second
		@packetSize = 1		// Half of stock value, to make up for the faster transmission

		nominalRange = 1500000
		maxPowerFactor = 8
		maxDataFactor = 4
	}
}

Secondly, here's a plugin request: AntennaThrottle

It kind of sucks when you bottom out your batteries on a larger-than-expected transmission. Not only is being out of power damn awkward, it's annoying to see the warning message every time the antenna does get a packet through. What I'd love is an in-game slider to throttle antenna bandwidth on-the-fly, limiting it to the selected electricity/second rate.

An example use-case: My solar-powered Joolian probe just finished an aerocapture, and now has a bunch of data to transmit. There's a few hundred Mits of data sitting in storage, but the probe is only packing a couple hundred units of electricity and generating only 2E/s. In this case, I'd set the slider to throttle antennae at 2E/s and start the transmission, knowing it'll take a while but happily never running out of power. If I suddenly get eclisped by Tylo (the jerk), downthrottle all the way to 0E/s, temporarily "pausing" the transmission without any actual data loss incurred from a transmission abort.

Does that sound doable, or even a good idea?

That does sound like a good idea; it annoys me, too, to have to feather the timewarp settings to keep the antenna transmitting without zeroing out the power. But, I'm not certain it's very easy. My impression from casually listening to chatter about mods like Interstellar is that ElectricCharge handling is somewhat esoteric and inconsistent; it might be difficult for me to properly detect the actual net gain in order to do an auto balance. A manual balance should be easier; tweaking packetInterval upwards ought to reduce the actual power draw and proportionally reduce the throughput. I need to make sure that works consistently, but if it does, adding the tweakable control is super easy.

[Zeroignite]

That does sound like a good idea; it annoys me, too, to have to feather the timewarp settings to keep the antenna transmitting without zeroing out the power. But, I'm not certain it's very easy. My impression from casually listening to chatter about mods like Interstellar is that ElectricCharge handling is somewhat esoteric and inconsistent; it might be difficult for me to properly detect the actual net gain in order to do an auto balance. A manual balance should be easier; tweaking packetInterval upwards ought to reduce the actual power draw and proportionally reduce the throughput. I need to make sure that works consistently, but if it does, adding the tweakable control is super easy.

I was thinking manual control. And rather than reducing packet interval, I was thinking more reducing packet size, so you see data is still going out regularly

[toadicus]

AntennaRange has been updated to version 1.1! This update brings optional occlusion modeling, adds a tweakable "throttle" to packet size, and some more behavioral improvements. Check out the new AntennaRange toolbar button in the Space Center to activate occlusion modeling!

The occlusion modeling works in vitro, but hasn't seen a lot of playtesting. Please consider it experimental for now, and let me know if you run into any trouble!

Note that the Toolbar mod is ʀᴇǫᴜɪʀᴇᴅ in order to access the config menu! You can get it straight from the source.

CHANGELOG:

v.1.1 [2014-05-03]
* Added tweakable "throttle" for packet size, to let you trim your transmission rate to stay within your power limits.
* Config patches updated to MM 2.0 format.
* Added occulsion modeling as an optional feature.  See the toolbar button in the space center to enable!
* Major refactor of underlying library code to use ToadicusTools.
* Relicensed to Modified BSD.
* Improved behavior when transmitting directly from an experiment dialog.

[Zeroignite]

I requested a feature and it got added!

<3

[Tortoise]

Looks like a nice mod, I might try it

[toadicus]

I requested a feature and it got added!

<3

Thanks for the request! Thoughts from users are literally the only way I have to know how to make my mods better. Without your feedback I'm just guessing.

Looks like a nice mod, I might try it

Hope you enjoy it!

[tdubic]

On image Comms DTS-M1 cost just 100, i think it should cost at least 550.

[Tortoise]

Does this mod allow me to put some satellites in orbit near other ones, to increase range and transmit data through them?

[toadicus]

On image Comms DTS-M1 cost just 100, i think it should cost at least 550.

This mod doesn't touch the cost numbers, and they currently have no use in game. If you're using a mod that makes the cost numbers meaningful, I recommend you consult the author of that mod with your recommendations.

Does this mod allow me to put some satellites in orbit near other ones, to increase range and transmit data through them?

If by that you mean something like: "if I put a short range satellite in an orbit near a long range satellite, can the short range satellite make use of the long range satellite's longer range to transmit data home?" then the answer is yes. For example, the max range on the short range whip antenna is about 4 Mm, but the max range on the large dish antenna extends well beyond Eeloo. If you take a large ship out to Jool, say, with a large dish on the "mothership" and whip antennæ on your moon landers, your landers will be able to relay their experiment data back to Kerbin through the larger ship.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Yay, an update! Just so I'm clear, the occlusion modelling - does that mean that if my line of sight is broken, I can't transmit? Either way, thanks for the update

[toadicus]

Yay, an update! Just so I'm clear, the occlusion modelling - does that mean that if my line of sight is broken, I can't transmit? Either way, thanks for the update

Yes, that is exactly what it means.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Yes, that is exactly what it means.

Awwwwwwwww yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhh....

I love this little mod, it's like a RemoteTechLite

[toadicus]

AntennaRange has been updated to version 1.2! This version introduces a new optional feature that will interrupt control of unmanned probes when no relay connection exists, and improves the presentation of relay data in the right-click context menus.

Once again, both of the new "hard mode" features are still experimental. Please let me know how they're working!

CHANGELOG:

v.1.2 [2014-05-07]
* New and improved right-click GUI presentation for relays.
* Improved accuracy of line of sight checks.
* Added optional feature to prevent control of unmanned vessels without radio contact.

[KerbMav]

Awwwwwwwww yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhh....

I love this little mod, it's like a RemoteTechLite

Indeed - so what are the differences now?

No need to target dishes, all antenna will simply connect as long as they are in range of each other and regardless of type?

No time delay I guess?

Anything else?

[toadicus]

Sounds good must try.

Let me know how it goes!

Indeed - so what are the differences now?

No need to target dishes, all antenna will simply connect as long as they are in range of each other and regardless of type?

No time delay I guess?

Anything else?

Honestly I've never used RemoteTech so I have no idea what the differences are. But, based on what I think I've gleaned about RemoteTech from watching Scott Manley's videos, here are some guesses:

AntennaRange...

• does not have any time delay or any facility for programming future actions.
  
• does not have additive ranges; everything is transmitter-side (so if you have a whip antenna out at Jool, it can't phone home even if there is a big dish around Kerbin).
  
• does not require antennae to target other antennae and does not have any limit to the number of relays that can be "connected" at any time. not a difference per JeffreyCor
  
• does not have those cool lines that show you which relays are connected to each other.
  
• does not maintain a persistent model of the relay network; everything is calculated dynamically as contact is required (constantly, when probe connectivity is enabled and you're flying a probe).
  
• allows line-of-sight and connectivity requirements to be disabled.

Edited May 7, 2014 by toadicus

[Zeroignite]

...fantastic. I'll have to play with the new probe-LoS-required logic... should make initial voyages to outer planets, erm, fun.

Small change request: right now the throttle setting lists power usage in terms of E/packet... can you change that to E/s now that packet interval is constant? E/s is what we generally are actually hawk-eyeing