[0.22] Aviation & Probes Tech Tree

[Black Spy]

Bunch of improvements! v.1.1 (Firespitter version)

v.1.1
- rebalanced construction parts
- B9 Aerospace parts with oxidizer and RCS are moved to rocketry and RCS nodes
- added KW Rocketry v2.5.5 support
- fixed exploit with Deadly Reentry's parts (heat shields works like separators, so placed together)
- and many small fixes

[BrickedKeyboard]

[jpinard]

My next full campaign playthru I'm totally doing this wiith all the mods you listed.

[BrickedKeyboard]

Feedback from actual playtesting : So I made a firespitter + B9 based propeller plane, and I went to most of the biomes on Kerbin. Eventually I had the science lab, the barometer, the thermometer, and Jeb to give me science. This got me some points, but I found out that there is just not enough points on all of kerbin with just these instruments to really get anywhere. I was forced to do a large number of 1 way trips because I could not radio the findings back to base (no line of site to KSC, and no satellites), and I just couldn't justify investing more points in the aerospace tree other than to get the propeller engine plane and the Lancaster engines.

Suggestion : Stick most of the science instruments into the aerospace tree. I think everything except for the Science Jr and the mystery goo you could justify "lore-wise" as coming from necessity when the kerbals developed aircraft. (while those pure-scientists just sat around and played in their Science jr).

The instruments are : accelerometer, thermometer, barometer, "gravioli" detector, and sensor array computing nose cone. You need the first 3 to make even basic aircraft work in real reality, and I could imagine that when the kerbals develop supersonic high end jets they developed that nose cone to measure what was happening when you break the "sound barrier". And maybe the gravioli detector came as a collaboration between a science tree item and an aerospace tree item, as the pilots went to the scientists and asked if the force pulling them down was the same everywhere.

That way, you start the game, and you go into the aerospace tree, getting more science instruments as you go, so you can fully explore kerbin making all of the measurements available. The way it is now, if you put points into aerospace more than the bare minimum needed to fly to biomes and do the few measurements you can make, you will screw yourself - you'll exhaust all the available science points, and you won't be able to get to space to get more.

Propeller engines may be fun to start with, also, but to really get anywhere you need the turbojet. But you cannot have that without screwing yourself, and then, later, once you have unlocked more science instruments by making trips into space and bringing back science, and you want to get more science from kerbin, you can just do suborbital hops which are much quicker, especially since you can just time warp during the high ballistic arc part of the flight.

Edited November 14, 2013 by BrickedKeyboard

[Black Spy]

I wanted to add atmospheric sensor together with barometer, but even one scan gives too many points (100+ from each biome). Same with accelerometer. I don't think we need to fully explore the aviation branch before probe flights. I would stay on TurboJets. Or even without them. By the way, they are easy to use for launching rockets, if not run on a ballistic trajectory. Using technology worth up to 60 SP you can make Kerbin's satellite coverage and transmit data from anywhere. I believe that the technologies of medium rocket engines, Science Jr and improved antennas with solar panels are equal. You can also get a lot of science from fly-by around the Mun. Although it is difficult to do without the 50 Mm dishes. And maybe I should reduce the cost of all communication systems to make unmanned missions easier.

[BrickedKeyboard]

Probe flights are impractical within the current setup, because 1. Antenna for long distance are very finicky and unreliable, and if you lose connection, the mission is lost. 2. You get huge numbers of points for collecting samples. I just got 800 science for grabbing a soil sample from minmus.

[BrickedKeyboard]

"Helicopters" node breaks the save. I cannot figure out what exactly is wrong with this node...and the problem is not every time, but in my actual savegame (with all the extra crap in it from actually playing the game, not the pristine file distributed here), researching helicopters makes the node "flight" disappear and prevents me from researching anything else.

Deleting the node from tree.cfg and removing the dependency on the next item up in aerodynamics fixes the problem.

I can't see anything special about the node in the tree.cfg file, I don't know what the error is caused by.

[Black Spy]

These two nodes have a mystical relationship. They are always in conflict with each other, so I had to change their names (flight->aerodynamicSystems, aerodynamicSystems-> flight). I fixed it a few patches ago. But the saved game has not changed, and now sees the two technologies called flight. Sorry about that. Earlier this occurred for some other reason.

[simmy2109]

Had weird errors myself recently with this tree. Sometimes a research will cause a duplicate in the persistence file. I've also seen it delete a prerequisite from the persistence file, suddenly causing really weird errors in the tree. To be fair, I don't know if this problem is unique to this tree; I haven't tried any other custom trees (I really liked this one best so I've been using it!). It doesn't happen with the stock tree however.

I don't see anything "wrong" in the setup of this tree that would explain these errors. It would be very interesting to know if other custom trees are having these problems as well (although... I see no mention of these kind of problems on other threads so it very well might be only this tree). It could be something very obscure that has more to do with how Squad implemented the trees. Maybe this tree doesn't something that seems fine, but causes something screwy with Squad's implementation.

[Black Spy]

Which version of the tree do you use? I've seen this bug in other trees when I changed them a few times during the game. And it seems I'll fix it eventually.

Also, an update to the standard version will be soon.

Firespitter version 1.2. I hope it fixed forever. Uncompatible with previous save games.

[simmy2109]

Yeah I prefer the standard version to be honest. B9 is too RAM heavy for me, and I prefer the rockets. Your tree is still awesome without it. And I used the version you have listed on the first post currently.

Let me tell you which node caused the disappearing bug I described (maybe you've already fixed it now). It happened when I researched the 120 sci rocket part node (the one that is a prereq to RCS). This had the effect of making the 45 sci probe rocket part node disappear from the persistence file. Weird...

[Black Spy]

Standard version v1.2 ready. Uncompatible with previous save games, but you can edit name of the aviation node in the save file. I hope it will work correctly.