[WIP][TechTree @ 0.23.5] - [MS19e] - Realistic Progression LITE

[MedievalNerd]

I should have been more precise: RPL's required mods already provide the necessary parts (FASA has the A7 engine, KW rocketry has russian-style side tanks, and Bobcat's russian engines include all the necessary ones iirc), the issue here is that RPL does not give access to these parts early enough. The result is that at the moment I have huge modern-looking kerolox engines (which descriptions claim are German) at my disposal but need to spend 100 more science to get a WWII-grade alcohol-fueled engine (A7 was directly derived from V-2 technology). That is plain absurd.

Also, a third issue: It might be a result of some sort of mistake on my part during the installation process, but some engines have absurd sizes. I mean, one American engine with 195 thrust is literally four times the volume of a Russian one with 380 (or sth like that) thrust.

Balance is still off, I tried my best to do some rough math and calculate when what unlocks with which experiments. It's still far off from decent i'm afraid.

The FASA parts are a mess, I'll concede that point! Redvar will be adding years to the parts, and i'll make them fit the nodes better with that!

[Semmel]

I have the exact same problem. I hoped to use procedural fairings since they are so much more convenient. But they are not in the VAB, only in the tech windows.

Remove Part Catalogue from your mods, I had the same problem and this solved it.

Also, a third issue: It might be a result of some sort of mistake on my part during the installation process, but some engines have absurd sizes. I mean, one American engine with 195 thrust is literally four times the volume of a Russian one with 380 (or sth like that) thrust.

Installed real engines and rfts engine pack by any chance? Try removing real engines.

Some feedback:

Overall it's a very nice idea, I like the probes, etc.

However, there are a few complaints. First of all, player gets the probe cores long before he gets the engines used to launch them historically. I mean, I have the sputniks, but I have no way of recreating the R-7 rocket; I have the explorer, but I don't have the A7 engine. Second, some missions seem utterly impossible to do properly. I mean, did someone seriously succeed in launching Sputnik 2 without any RCS or reaction wheels? If yes, I'd like to know how, to me it feels like riding a drunk horse.

Balance the rocket such that you end up in orbit. It will be highly elliptical, but you can get there with gimbling and tailfans alone. Dont try to recreate history.. RPL is not made for that .. yet. I had no big problems doing this mission, I cant go back and check what I have used though. I messed around with the parts and I cant load the Sputnik 2 probe any more.

[NathanKell]

Medieval Nerd: I second pjf's request for Github, as you know

Hattivat: as mentioned, RPL is not designed for historical engines (the RealEngines pack); instead it's designed for RftS engines, which are realistic, and often inspired by real engines, but none of which are 100% real.

In fact, you do have the closest equivalents to the R-7 engines at TL1: the Decurion and the Miles (LV-T45 and 30). You just need to use two per core (which is still 1/2 the thrust chambers the R-7 used, obviously) and use the LR16s (24-77 radial) as verniers.

You shouldn't need RCS, even to deorbit (!). You can use engine gimbaling to orient your stages on ascent, and, assuming you finish your orbital burn at apogee and fully prograde (as you should) you will be oriented purely retrograde at perigee, at which point you are aligned for retro-fire. Certainly you don't need RCS for an ascent. Gimbaling is more than enough for that.

Regarding sizes: you understand that sea level and vacuum require different nozzle sizes, right? Apollo SPS is ~3m diameter and produces 90kN thrust, and it absolutely doesn't have the largest expansion ratio even! By contrast the XLR11 had four chambers, each about 0.2m in diameter, and each produced 9kN of thrust; another example would be the LR-83 used on the Navaho cruise missile (and, modified slightly, as the booster engines for Atlas). It produced 602kN thrust and was 0.88m in diameter.

It all depends on your expansion ratio (nozzle exit diameter : throat diameter), and you want a relatively low ratio for sea level, and near-infinite for vacuum.

[Hattivat]

Balance is still off, I tried my best to do some rough math and calculate when what unlocks with which experiments. It's still far off from decent i'm afraid.

It is certainly decent, you did a good job. I'm just pointing out a few inconsistencies. I don't know about recreating R-7, maybe the player is not intended to do that at my stage, but I'm pretty sure I should have access to the A7 engine. Currently it is in the Freedom 7 node, while imho it should be either in engines 1 or in explorer 1 node.

Installed real engines and rfts engine pack by any chance? Try removing real engines.

No, I'm pretty sure I haven't installed real engines.

Balance the rocket such that you end up in orbit. It will be highly elliptical, but you can get there with gimbling and tailfans alone. Dont try to recreate history.. RPL is not made for that .. yet. I had no big problems doing this mission, I cant go back and check what I have used though. I messed around with the parts and I cant load the Sputnik 2 probe any more.

Well, my problem is actually that I'm being forced to recreate history - Sputnik 2 is 2 meters wide, and at my tech level, I have no way of creating a 2m tank - small engine - 2m tank interstage (proc fairings only go up to 1.5 m, no dedicated interstages available, decouplers only in 0.5m, 0.625m and 2m sizes). As a result, I can't have an upper stage, and am forced to launch it balistically like an actual R-7 would (hence my complaint about being unable to recreate its looks - if I am de facto forced to recreate it anyway, I'd like it to look right), which is proving rather difficult. I freely admit that I'm a noob at RSS, so it is certainly possible given enough trial-and-error, but the rise in difficulty between Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 is massive as the result, which is hardly a good design choice as far as player progression is concerned.

In fact, you do have the closest equivalents to the R-7 engines at TL1: the Decurion and the Miles (LV-T45 and 30). You just need to use two per core (which is still 1/2 the thrust chambers the R-7 used, obviously) and use the LR16s (24-77 radial) as verniers.

Thanks, I didn't know that. It would be nice to have a wiki or a tutorial explaining such things.

You shouldn't need RCS, even to deorbit (!). You can use engine gimbaling to orient your stages on ascent, and, assuming you finish your orbital burn at apogee and fully prograde (as you should) you will be oriented purely retrograde at perigee, at which point you are aligned for retro-fire. Certainly you don't need RCS for an ascent. Gimbaling is more than enough for that.

I don't want to use RCS, but I might do it in desperation. And I certainly agree gimbaling is more than enough, in fact that's precisely the problem. The gimbaling on large engines is so strong that with a 1.5-stage rocket (as described above, I'm unable to have an upper stage for Sputnik 2) keeping it on course towards the end of the burn, when mass gets low, feels like a rodeo. With Sputnik 1 I could have a small upper stage, so it was relatively easy. With Sputnik 2 the margin of error gets very small.

Regarding sizes: you understand that sea level and vacuum require different nozzle sizes, right?

Yes, I do, but I wasn't aware that differences could get that big.

[MedievalNerd]

Medieval Nerd: I second pjf's request for Github, as you know

Yes Nathan, Yes I know.

[NathanKell]

OK, sounds like I need to talk to Medieval Nerd and get the patch out for the new Procedural Fairings (and procedural parts).

Regarding over-control: if you're using MechJeb, open Attitude Settings and turn on "use stock SAS." If not, hit capslock to enter fine controls mode; you should have less strong gimbal response.

[Hattivat]

I had no idea about that caps lock trick, thanks! With this help and after a copious amount of attempts, I've finally sort of managed to put Sputnik 2 in orbit. "Sort of" because periapsis was at 120 km, but it was stable enough to perform all the experiments, so I can move on. The end of the burn was still quite rough, but manageable.

[edit:] As for the fairings - yeah, it probably needs patching. Or I have done something terribly wrong when installing mods. In any case, I have researched fairings up to 2.5 m (3rd tech level) and I still have literally no fairing bases available to me. I do have fairing walls (too many of them in fact), but no bases, other than the interstage one. In R&D it shows me that I have plenty of fairing bases, but none of them appear in VAB.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Hattivat

[Thalur]

Which version of Procedural Fairings are you using? I just noticed the config file settings have changed name between version 2.4.4 (which is what I am using) and the current 3.x version. Maybe that is where it is going wrong?

[ThorBeorn]

Has anyone got a fix to increase the size limits (both bigger and smaller) on tank/SRB sizes in Procedural Parts that works with RO+RPL?

[Hattivat]

Ok, I finally have fairing bases. Turns out one has to buy the second level of control tech to have them enabled. Weird.

[issarlk]

Remove Part Catalogue from your mods, I had the same problem and this solved it.

I didn't have it in my mods. I did without procedural fairing, but not for long. I don't know which tech unlocked them but now I have them, so it's just a minor problem early in the progress of the game.

Here's my tech tree:

http://snag.gy/Lnin8.jpg

[pjf]

So, feedback time! If there's a bug/issues tracker I'm happy to post these there (I worry about things getting lost in 170+ pages of thread). A lot of these are personal preferences, although some I think are actual bugs or balance issues. I'm still doing things around Earth, but here's what I've got on the tech tree thus far:

- The LR18-4 engine that seems to arrive a tech node too early, as it requires a 6m tank, which is not available until the next node.

- I was surprised to find rover bodies down the manned spaceflight side of the tech tree. I would have expected them in with the landing legs (that's where the wheels are).

- The Sputnik I experiment can be repeated for extra science, unlike most other custom experiments which return 100% science on completion.

- The geiger counter requires recovery for full science value. I'd suggest tweaking it to return 100% science on transmission.

- The LM-00 and LM-00a landing struts have a crash tolerance of 160m/s! This is an order of magnitude higher than other landing legs.

- Advanced Science Tech has refineries, these might make more sense in the off-world mining tree.

- The cyrostat and IR telescope feels like it would be more at home in the science tree, rather the electronics tree.

- The first radiator node contains a 70" RCS tank, which seems misplaced.

- The first radiator node contains two battery packs. I'd suggest putting them in the electronics branch.

- Gemini unlocks the Manned Orbital Laboratory cargo bay. I'm not sure where the modules are for this, I suspect in the science tree. I'd have them both unlock at once.

- The various storage tanks and bins in the "unsorted" nodes feel most at home in the off-world mining tree.

- FASA pod flags have a very low crash tolerance. They sometimes explode when accelerating at high-g.

- Nosecones seem to be spread throughout the tech tree.

- The only conic procedural fairings are German. Egg-shaped fairings come in various flavours.

- Goodness me there's a lot of parts! May I suggest moving fairings, aerodynamic surfaces, and tanks into zero-cost nodes that hang off their original parent nodes? This means people using the various procedural packs can have less cluttered build screens.

- There seem to be very few reaction wheels; is this intentional?

- Various MechJeb features (notably the node planner) seem to be disabled, but are enabled if using the WAC Corporal Experiments core, which can also be radially mounted.

- Currently we seem to get all the probe cores at once! I know it's planned but it would be lovely to have them spread out a bit; perhaps some in electronics (low-power cores), and some sprinkled back into the existing probe tree (so not every launch needs to be a Sputnik/Vanguard/Luna core).

- Flying High on the moon seems to result in some collisions with terrain, making the impact probe experiment more realistic, but more challenging.

Thanks again for a great tech tree, I'm reallying enjoying this! You rock!

~ pjf

[pjf]

And continuing on, with just a few things about building...

- The RCST-125 RCS tank appears in the 'control' tab, all other tanks seem to be in propulsion.

- The LM-00 legs appear in the 'control' tab, rather than in utility.

- Various nosecones and the AIES fairings appear in the structural tab, whereas most appear in the aerodynamics tab

- Nanocone RCS Mk1 is in the utility tab, but feels it would be better in the control tab.

Many thanks again!

~ pjf

[sTiKyt]

Anyone else having problems transferring experiments in full? My transmitter often cuts out momentarily, reducing the total science returned. It's a minor problem but it gets quite irritating since it sometimes means having to transfer around 5 times to get the full amount.

I'm using RemoteTech2 v1.3.3, could that be the issue? Am I still supposed use the community hotfix despite being out of date?

Edited June 11, 2014 by sTiKyt

[MedievalNerd]

So, feedback time! If there's a bug/issues tracker I'm happy to post these there (I worry about things getting lost in 170+ pages of thread). A lot of these are personal preferences, although some I think are actual bugs or balance issues. I'm still doing things around Earth, but here's what I've got on the tech tree thus far:

- The LR18-4 engine that seems to arrive a tech node too early, as it requires a 6m tank, which is not available until the next node.

- I was surprised to find rover bodies down the manned spaceflight side of the tech tree. I would have expected them in with the landing legs (that's where the wheels are).

- The Sputnik I experiment can be repeated for extra science, unlike most other custom experiments which return 100% science on completion.

- The geiger counter requires recovery for full science value. I'd suggest tweaking it to return 100% science on transmission.

- The LM-00 and LM-00a landing struts have a crash tolerance of 160m/s! This is an order of magnitude higher than other landing legs.

- Advanced Science Tech has refineries, these might make more sense in the off-world mining tree.

- The cyrostat and IR telescope feels like it would be more at home in the science tree, rather the electronics tree.

- The first radiator node contains a 70" RCS tank, which seems misplaced.

- The first radiator node contains two battery packs. I'd suggest putting them in the electronics branch.

- Gemini unlocks the Manned Orbital Laboratory cargo bay. I'm not sure where the modules are for this, I suspect in the science tree. I'd have them both unlock at once.

- The various storage tanks and bins in the "unsorted" nodes feel most at home in the off-world mining tree.

- FASA pod flags have a very low crash tolerance. They sometimes explode when accelerating at high-g.

- Nosecones seem to be spread throughout the tech tree.

- The only conic procedural fairings are German. Egg-shaped fairings come in various flavours.

- Goodness me there's a lot of parts! May I suggest moving fairings, aerodynamic surfaces, and tanks into zero-cost nodes that hang off their original parent nodes? This means people using the various procedural packs can have less cluttered build screens.

- There seem to be very few reaction wheels; is this intentional?

- Various MechJeb features (notably the node planner) seem to be disabled, but are enabled if using the WAC Corporal Experiments core, which can also be radially mounted.

- Currently we seem to get all the probe cores at once! I know it's planned but it would be lovely to have them spread out a bit; perhaps some in electronics (low-power cores), and some sprinkled back into the existing probe tree (so not every launch needs to be a Sputnik/Vanguard/Luna core).

- Flying High on the moon seems to result in some collisions with terrain, making the impact probe experiment more realistic, but more challenging.

Thanks again for a great tech tree, I'm reallying enjoying this! You rock!

~ pjf

Sweet mother of Kerbals. That's a lot of points.

Take note that some of them aren't to do with RPL but with the mods themselves. I'm a bit swamped with real life at the moment, but i'll be jumping back in this weekend, but more so the next. (took some vacation time, which I'll be sharing with you guys & galz... ain't that a treat. )

But thanks for the feedback, I'll check it out in depth and let you know where what should be posted for better follow up. Some points do have to do with RPL though.

Cheers,

[MedievalNerd]

Anyone else having problems transferring experiments in full? My transmitter often cuts out momentarily, reducing the total science returned. It's a minor problem but it gets quite irritating since it sometimes means having to transfer around 5 times to get the full amount.

I'm using RemoteTech2 v1.3.3, could that be the issue? Am I still supposed use the community hotfix despite being out of date?

In terms of custom experiments, the issues lies with RT2 I'm afraid. Perhaps some stock experiments haven't been updated, but for the most part they should have. Perhaps the geiger counter by default is set to 0% transmission? It's not 'my part'. So I dunno. D:

[pjf]

STiKyt: If you're going to pick a RemoteTech2 release, you almost certainly want build-develop-13 (or whatever the latest dev release is now) which not only contains the community hotfix, but also solves a lot of other bugs as well. It's a precursor to the upcoming 1.4.0 release.

As for the cut-outs, I've not seen that behaviour before, so I'm not quite sure what's causing it. Some experiments (like the geiger counter) are repeatable, giving smaller amounts of science each time. That's stock KSP behaviour, although I understand that MN has fixed it for a lot of experiments (so you get full science in a single shot), which I greatly appreciate!

~ pjf

[pjf]

Sweet mother of Kerbals. That's a lot of points.

I'm adoring RPL! I figured some of them weren't RPL related, but I wasn't sure how many things were RPL tweaks or not. (I presume things like parts being in the wrong categories and the gieger counter are from wherever those parts are.)

I'm so glad to hear you've got some vacation time! Thanks again for the great work, and keep being awesome!

~ pjf

[sTiKyt]

Thanks. Just tested that version out and it's still an issue for every experiment, even MN's custom experiments. However I just looked at the release notes which I hadn't seen before and I noticed they're not supporting 0.23.5 (which I'm using) until RT 1.4 is out, so that's probably the issue. I guess I'll wait until then and report back whether it's still broken/working

[Semmel]

In terms of custom experiments, the issues lies with RT2 I'm afraid. Perhaps some stock experiments haven't been updated, but for the most part they should have. Perhaps the geiger counter by default is set to 0% transmission? It's not 'my part'. So I dunno. D:

I have the same issue. Sometimes it transmits 100% at once, sometimes it doesn't. I figured its not something RPL can fix, but since I do not play without it, I didn't report it. It didnt appear to be interfearing experiments though, because it happens indipendent of the experiment or the number of experiments I make at the same time.

[Semmel]

Has anyone got a fix to increase the size limits (both bigger and smaller) on tank/SRB sizes in Procedural Parts that works with RO+RPL?

With the current release of PP and RF, go to GameData/ProceduralParts/Parts/ZOtherMods/RFTank.cfg and alter the appropriate lines to the suggested ones in here: forum link. That gives you larger PP tanks, but not too large and removes the volume limit completely, so the tanks are only limited by their shape.

However, please consider:

Nathan sent me an MM tweak file that those the above. I'll be putting it into MS19f. Along with a few other fixes I've been noting from the forum posts since release.

Just hope people won't try your suggestion and end up doing funny things in the process.

So by using my suggestion, you might end up with funny things in the process but I don't understand the syntax of the MM tweaks to get the specific behavior as described in my post. MedievalNerd promised to fix the tanks issue with the next build of RPL.

[MedievalNerd]

With the current release of PP and RF, go to GameData/ProceduralParts/Parts/ZOtherMods/RFTank.cfg and alter the appropriate lines to the suggested ones in here: forum link. That gives you larger PP tanks, but not too large and removes the volume limit completely, so the tanks are only limited by their shape.

However, please consider:

So by using my suggestion, you might end up with funny things in the process but I don't understand the syntax of the MM tweaks to get the specific behavior as described in my post. MedievalNerd promised to fix the tanks issue with the next build of RPL.

Yes, sorry it's taking forever. Things ramped up at my work, so trying to even out things before jumping back in.

As I mentioned previously, I'm getting two 4 day weekends coming up! Plus I asked Nathan if we could take some time to discuss installation instructions, which I'll use for the installation video.

Bit of a vain moment here, I finally got to see my name in the credits of Watch_Dogs! I'm part of one of the studios that worked with Ubisoft for the localization & Audio production! Woot!

[Ratzap]

Bit of a vain moment here, I finally got to see my name in the credits of Watch_Dogs! I'm part of one of the studios that worked with Ubisoft for the localization & Audio production! Woot!

This sort of thing is always nice but I bet you'd feel happier if the thing your name was on wasn't getting hammered by the critics

BTW, there's a new mod that might fit well with RPL - shuts off engines when you stage (or they fall off). It'd make it easier to dump the prior stage as the tanks empty and acceleration goes nuts.

[MedievalNerd]

This sort of thing is always nice but I bet you'd feel happier if the thing your name was on wasn't getting hammered by the critics

Bah, I did my job well and proper.

Not my fault that in the ocean of people involved things didn't run as smoothly as they could. The sheer number of people involved in that game is mind boggling. Took me 6 minutes fast forwarding through the credits to hit my Company section. lol

[NathanKell]

pjf:

*LR18-4: Working on redoing the tech limits for tanks.

*Repeatable experiments *may* be an RT2 bug with transmission. Try to replicate without RT2?

*No idea even what struts you're talking about; I'd suggest talking to the part author?

*Weird about the FASA flags...

*There should be plain old conic fairings? Are they missing?

*NovaPunch has weird part placement, yes.

MN, congrats again on the "Name in Lights!"