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

[MedievalNerd]

What mods are you waiting on? I'm itching to try the new version.

Do you know what new "missions" will be present in MS19? I'm hoping for a complete set for kerbin probe/manned missions (which should only be another sub-orbital, bumper, and maybe a few low/high/polar orbital missions) and prehaps an MIR/ISS station mission. A small set lunar manned flyby/orbit/landing and a rover mission would be nice but i know these things take time. Once we have Kerbin (earth) and the mun (moon) rounded out with a 6 to 10 realistic missions each we will have "lots to do" while we await further out missions to Mars and Venus to be thought up. I think progress is going great, a small number of missions more will give almost everyone the tech they need to do outer planet missions. Also anyone else notice that the RSS delta-v map doesnt have pluto on it?

EDIT: question: of the mods listed in "Realism Overhaul: ROv2 + Modlist for RSS " which are suggested for RPL?

Hi andqui, Aazard.

Well with Nathan's help I think I have all the necessary mods to resume work.

I really wanted ground stations for RT2 to experiment, since building a sat network to do early orbital tests is a bit gamey. :/

Experiments I'm hoping to implement for MS19:

Atmospheric

1 Experiments with Project Bumper.

Sub Orbital

1 Experiments with Project Bumper.

Orbital

1 Experiment with Sputnik I

1 Experiment with Explorer

2/3 Experiments with Sputnik II

1 Experiment with Vanguard

Mun

Luna 1 - First Impact probe with a new 'chemical release' condition. You'll have to release all the sodium in the probe's core, before being able to trigger the experiment.

This will also be the first experiment to use my modified situation detection I've been rambling about. So even bodies like Mun, will have Flying High/low. Which will help make impact probes interesting. If I find the time, I'll squeeze in later impact probes, using romfarer's camera part, to take 'pictures' and 'video' data. Take note that this will be an abstract concept, not actually taking pictures or video that you can see afterwards. Just a different kind of 'data collection'.

Kerbin Manned

HOPING, that I'll have to revise the mission profiles of the mercury project and figure out some interesting way of mimicking this with experiments.

Venus & Mars Unammed

For MS19, I'll probably include 2 'non historical' probes to perform flybys. With the new science body params it'll be way more feasible to perform.

RPL Tech Tree & MFS integration

So, Nathan finally pulled yet another rabbit out of his hat. And we have a way to link MFS engine tech levels to tech tree nodes! So, when you have an engine tech level 1, you can't raise it past level 1 until you research the level 2 tech node, so forth. And this for all engine types including SRBs. Hurrah!

Probably in MS20

*Gemini (If the Agena Target module is ready)

*Lunokold

*The rest of the impact probes (for Mun)

*Revision of Flyby probes, and check about welding some parts to make them. We'll see what I can come up with to make them look like their historical counter parts.

*Maybe an early attempt at MCE integration with merging of experiments with mission conditions/parameters. A big maybe, this will take a lot of work, so I don't want to slow things down to much. Already taking too long for MS19 if I do say so myself.

*Considering adding a 'Experiment info' action, that would list the target body, situation and required amount of data/resource. So you could check mid flight, right now I did a rather eyesore of a acronym system like KE/ATM/Reading, and what not. Not a lot of space to write there!

Thanks again for the patience, and effort people have put in trying it out even though it requires quite a lot of findangling to get working.

Hopefully MS19 won't disappoint, too much.

Best,

EDIT: Come to think of it, i may include a few more 'non historical' experiments to help with later progression, and use those as placeholders for when I get proper models/stats and what not.

EDIT 2: Oh and again, if people would like to give a hand with making placeholder experiments, i'll be releasing a tutorial video along with MS19 release on how to make them, and explain how to use my custom experiment & datacollection modules.

Cheers!

Edited December 20, 2013 by MedievalNerd

[Guest]

Reading up on early Venus probes it seems the USSR had 2 series of over 12 flyby probes/landers/rovers, mainly in the series named "Venera" & "Vega", there is a large list of RL venus probes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_and_explorations_of_Venus

Some seem to have been as early as Feb 1961 (failed but attempted Tyazhely Sputnik)

Mars also has a fairly large list of flyby probes/landers/rovers here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars

starting as early as Oct 1960 with Korabl 4 and Korabl 5 (AKA Mars-1M with Mars 1960A and Mars 1960B

Even Mecury has had a few missions (mairner 10 in 1973, BepiColombo and MESSENGER) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mercury

This list might be a bit of "over-kill" on the number of probes/landers, but provides a good base to make missions off of, I would suggest this format per celestial body: (not all bodies would require all missions)

1. High/low SOI flyby Probe (as the current flyby probes work)

2. Surface Impact Probe that also take atmospheric readings, if present (i believe you know how to do this already...i dont lol)

3. Polar/inclined Orbital Mapping probe (i would suggest a SCANsat mapping sensor as it is well supported and continues to receive updates...and makes great maps with a grey-scale option, this would also allow the other types scanners to be put in orbit)

4: Basic lander Probe (just like normal, survive landing, take readings transmit)

5. Advanced lander Probe (just like normal, survive landing, take readings/samples & return them to "earth")

6. Unmanned Rover/roving lander probe

7. Manned orbital/landing mission (landing if return is possible, i doubt any astro/Kosmonaut would want the job of being 1st to get stranded on Venus)

8. Establishment of mid-term manned research outpost (surface or orbital depending on body, perhaps 30 day to 6 months minimum length depending on how hard it is to get a fully supplied base there and/or resupply it)

Only a "basic suggestion" i myself am unsure of the effort required to make all that "work" and then tie it into MCE

EDIT: on the note of "I really wanted ground stations for RT2 to experiment, since building a sat network to do early orbital tests is a bit gamey" >> is it possible to insert 4 to 6 ground comms stations with a 40km to 385,000km omni range to provide a "global radio-telegraphy coverage" network (like the ones in existence as early as 1899-1901) to either geosynchronous orbit altitude (@ 40km) or lunar orbit altitude (@ 385,000km) that would be a static part of the game? this would allow for basic communication atleast as far as GEO @ 40km (or to lunar surface @ 385,000km) but we would still need a comms sat network up and running to control probes outside of Lunar orbital altitude. This would not only make the missions upto lunar landings easier to manage, it would also be easier on budgets at game start, also it would remove the need for "sub-standard" 400-600GM GEO comms sats that would need near immediate replacement (a moderate issue unless one throws the lions share of science points to comms/solar tech, which impacts node progression heavily).

I am unsure if the game files can be edited to preexisting structures but a pair of launch clamp (with their releases disabled) holding a stayputnik mk1 with a communitron 32 & Comms DTS-m1 (set locked to active vessel or if possible have the probe stats edited to have the desired omni range to lunar surface "built-in") should work work as a static always on "comms tower", as long as they form a "line of sight" network. If the game would have issues having this existing from game start you could use a "starting" save file with them hyper edited into existance. Just throwing ideas around, i am unsure how well any of my ideas would work, if they would work at all lol

Edited December 20, 2013 by Guest

[blipadouzi]

Wow, I'm really loving what you're doing here.

If you're still taking suggestions, might I recommend you add:

L-Tech Scientific Stuff

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53813-0-22-L-Tech-Scientific-Stuff

And

SCANsat terrain mapping

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55832-PLUGIN-PARTS-WIP-SCANsat-terrain-mapping

[Guest]

Wow, I'm really loving what you're doing here.

If you're still taking suggestions, might I recommend you add:

L-Tech Scientific Stuff

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53813-0-22-L-Tech-Scientific-Stuff

And

SCANsat terrain mapping

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55832-PLUGIN-PARTS-WIP-SCANsat-terrain-mapping

Awesome! SCANsat would be great. AMAZED>> i love the "external camera" that takes rel pictures you can view!! These L-Tech science instruments and SCANsat should give the last bit of science opportunities needed to boost up the science with-in earth/moon area (fairly easy to get too, helping speed up the early node progression). Much better than using lazor cam as this one will save the pics for viewing! Not only that but the "skylab" is far more accessible for early-mid game use than the interstellar science lab (as this wont require the super heavy atomic reactors) and can be used to make a more "realistic" MIR/Skylab analog. If we can just get all the probes to take the generic "probe readings" i think we will have pretty much everything. Once we have some MCE integration the number of "story missions" these scanners, sensors, instruments and probe cores will allow for Earth & the Moon alone will make the pace that we progress feel more "real", not just rushing to a fully science equipped manned mission in low to high polar orbit of Earth ASAP for your 4th flight then "done with Earth orbits".

Edited December 21, 2013 by Guest

[spudcosmic]

Any idea when we can expect to see this updated?

[jrandom]

Edit: somehow managed to respond to the wrong thread! Agh.

Edited December 23, 2013 by jrandom

[MedievalNerd]

Any idea when we can expect to see this updated?

Hi Spudcosmic,

I'm taking some time off for Xmas, and also adopted a little kitten a few days ago. So that's keeping my hands full at the moment.

I'm thinking I'll be able to get MS19 out before the new year though, sorry for the wait everyone!

Happy holidays!

[RaccoonTOF]

Good to hear! I think I finally sorted out all of the "new-pc-teething-pains" that I always get with a new system, especially with a new OS (First PC with 8.1 on it...probably the biggest "learning curve" jump I've had setting things up since NT 3.51, lol). And now of course I have to go and re-track-down all of the updated addons for .23 .

Aazard: I hope I remember you being the one with the "rover problems" - this appears to be an issue in RSS with the visual surface and the mesh surface not aligning quite accurately (It occurs on Kerbin too for me, especially the area directly north of the runway). My solution has been to build much wider-stanced rovers than usual, with as low a CoM as possible (hint, if you have lander/rover combos, have the descent stage fuel on the upper part of the rocket, and ascent stage fuel on the lower part - takes some funky plumbing sometimes, but helps with CoM greatly) and be sure to include a good RELIABLE and STURDY flip/roll recovery mechanism. In fact, having "outrigger" landing legs arranged so that they will "float" just above the surface without hitting the smaller obstacles, but providing "sliding" stability for larger dips/turns helps a lot here too, and can then also be used as one "half" of your anti-flip/recovery setup as well. I can get a good design going 20-30m/s over even the nastiest terrain around KSC, in full-control-extent turns without flipping in this manner - especially if you position a couple of structural elements directly in front (with nothing else attached to them) positioned so that in case you do crash hard into something "unseen", they can act as a bumper/"emergency ablative armor" in the worst cases . Control is still kinda skid-prone, and you do still get tossed into the air at some apparently random moments, but if designed in this way at least it shouldn't be fatal to the rover or rover/lander primary systems...

Edited December 27, 2013 by RaccoonTOF

[Guest]

Good to hear! I think I finally sorted out all of the "new-pc-teething-pains" that I always get with a new system, especially with a new OS (First PC with 8.1 on it...probably the biggest "learning curve" jump I've had setting things up since NT 3.51, lol). And now of course I have to go and re-track-down all of the updated addons for .23 .

Aazard: I hope I remember you being the one with the "rover problems" - this appears to be an issue in RSS with the visual surface and the mesh surface not aligning quite accurately (It occurs on Kerbin too for me, especially the area directly north of the runway). My solution has been to build much wider-stanced rovers than usual, with as low a CoM as possible (hint, if you have lander/rover combos, have the descent stage fuel on the upper part of the rocket, and ascent stage fuel on the lower part - takes some funky plumbing sometimes, but helps with CoM greatly) and be sure to include a good RELIABLE and STURDY flip/roll recovery mechanism. In fact, having "outrigger" landing legs arranged so that they will "float" just above the surface without hitting the smaller obstacles, but providing "sliding" stability for larger dips/turns helps a lot here too, and can then also be used as one "half" of your anti-flip/recovery setup as well. I can get a good design going 20-30m/s over even the nastiest terrain around KSC, in full-control-extent turns without flipping in this manner - especially if you position a couple of structural elements directly in front (with nothing else attached to them) positioned so that in case you do crash hard into something "unseen", they can act as a bumper/"emergency ablative armor" in the worst cases . Control is still kinda skid-prone, and you do still get tossed into the air at some apparently random moments, but if designed in this way at least it shouldn't be fatal to the rover or rover/lander primary systems...

Well that needs to be fixed ASAP, this ruins the feeling of realism, having to build a larger, heavier and awkward looking rover. I really wanted to build small light, slower but easier to land rover. The visual surface and the mesh surface not aligning to the point of being hard to drive on is nearly unacceptable, this should be corrected before any further work on this project is moved forward, as the RSS solar system could be as real and pretty as it could get, but without correctly aligned surfaces to visuals its a near fail. I hope this receives attention before a new version release.

[dlrk]

Can this please be added to the regular tree loader?

[MedievalNerd]

@ ALL,

Happy new year everyone!

I've finally dragged myself back to KSP after a long break!

I'm thinking i'll get MS19 out by tomorrow evening at the latest! For MS20 I may take a minor sidestep from the hyperrealism of remaking probes parts that look close to their historical counter parts, and work more with existing probe parts and make a more extensive progression that leads past the venus & mars flybys. I'm not that good to calculate mass and part resizing, so I often have to go rely on Nathan's expertise on the matter. So rather than put more weight on his plate, I'll go with a more gamey approach in the meantime, and go over them and get some more accurate parts in place as we move forward.

Nathan met a modeler that seemed interested in making probe parts and engines. I believe he's working on engines for now. But he'll probably get to it at some point!

I hope you'll enjoy the reiszed nosecones for MS19, lol.

Can this please be added to the regular tree loader?

I'm dying for it to get published, but I have had only failures when trying to reach out to r4m0n. I wouldn't dare send him another PM, I hope he didn't block me already.

Until he's more available, we'll have to endure the TreeEdit pains. One major suggestion which I will put in the OP, is to rebind your quicksave key. Since the F5 key is apparently always being checked by TreeLoader, and if you press it anywhere else than in the science lab it saves a blank tree. :/ I don't use quicksave much in my career games, but for those who do, a temporary rebind will do the job. Although I understand the difficulty of undoing the F5 quicksave reflex.

As soon as I hear back from him, I'll make sure to shoot fireworks and go streaking. Well, maybe not the latter.

Stay tuned,

[MedievalNerd]

Well that needs to be fixed ASAP, this ruins the feeling of realism, having to build a larger, heavier and awkward looking rover. I really wanted to build small light, slower but easier to land rover. The visual surface and the mesh surface not aligning to the point of being hard to drive on is nearly unacceptable, this should be corrected before any further work on this project is moved forward, as the RSS solar system could be as real and pretty as it could get, but without correctly aligned surfaces to visuals its a near fail. I hope this receives attention before a new version release.

Just an FYI, Nathan is aware of this, but he's working on other mods as well which have/had dire issues. The surface driving is sadly a bit secondary to those other issues. There are also some mesh scaling issues with some of the smaller bodies, IE, the moons of mars.

He'll get to it, but there is so much to do. I know it can seem straight forward from your point of view, but there are multiple factors at play here. I'll see once MS19 is out if I can investigate this further for him, and see if there is anything my feeble skills can do to help.

Cheers,

[dlrk]

Is r4mon still active? This is a bit ridiculous

[andqui]

@ ALL,

Happy new year everyone!

I've finally dragged myself back to KSP after a long break!

I'm thinking i'll get MS19 out by tomorrow evening at the latest!

I hate to rush good work, but I've been waiting very patiently This is the only mod I'm waiting on to restart an RSS career. Any news?

[MedievalNerd]

I hate to rush good work, but I've been waiting very patiently This is the only mod I'm waiting on to restart an RSS career. Any news?

Howdy all,

Got sick this weekend, and starting today I'm back full time at my job. But, rest assured, I'm going to be inserting some KSP update time on weeknights.

I won't be giving an ETA, since I seem to suck at giving those and making them happen.

Here's a an update and what's done, and what's left.

Done:

#1 - A little more than 50% of the new experiments i was adding.

#2 - Project Bumper - A4/WAC engines are done. (AKA The V2 Rocket, with a mounted WAC Corporal) (By NathanKell)

To be done:

Plugin & Experiments:

#1 - Finish custom experiments for historical probes.

#2 - Add placeholder probes & experiments. (Past Sputnik 3)

#3 - Update plugin for 'chemical release' experiments. (Empty X resource before experiment can be done)

Tech Tree:

#1 - Revision of fuel tank placement.

#2 - Potentially removing the tech line for fairings and making them available on start. (Unless we can find a way to bind max/min sizes with tech nodes, much work there so don't hold your breath)

#2 - Potential integration of tech levels bound to research nodes. (Need to double check with Nathan if this is good to go)

#3 - Full revision of probes tech lines.

Right now, I've got all the mods updated, and making a bit of progress. But I'm really waiting to get my hands on ROv3. Since from my discussions with Nathan, we might opt to manually modify transmission and communication costs for antennas/packets. A blanket change is more appealing (using the settings file), since it does all of them one shot. Life is hard like that. Plus I have Nathan telling me he's working on an alternate range system! It's like building a house a quicksand.

Fret not, I haven't given up!

[m_robber]

Thanks for all the hard work, Medieval. This mod (along with the realism stuff) is what keeps me coming back to KSP.

[Guest]

Hope your holidays were merry Medieval! If there is a change planned to tech tree i would like to make a request and suggestion. Suggestion >> add the inter-stage & procedural fairing to start node and lose the "sized" fairings all together, it would most likely be the simplest way to solve this issue. Request >> Any chance we can have ScanSat integration? Its a very good mod and a "realistic" thing to do when researching a celestial body. Other than that the "L-Tech Scientific Stuff" would make a nice addition to the science pool. Thanks for all your hard work and for looking into my rover vs surface issue.

[MedievalNerd]

@m_robber, well thank you kind sir! I truly enjoy encouraging posts, it's what keeps me going.

@Aazard, Yup holidays were nice, except that last little bump around new years. Ugh. I think you'll like what I'm doing, as from what I understand of your explanation that's pretty much what I'm doing. Fairings will all be availalbe on start. I'm keeping even the NP/KW fairings too, simply because some people apparently like to use them. So heh, I personally think that once you go procedural you can't go back!

I'm truly interesting in both L-Tech and ScanSat. But if I want to get MS19 out the door relatively soon, I'd rather keep them out of this update, just so that I have more time to finalize this first update. Even before people started suggesting ScanSat it was already on my radar. (See what I did there?)

I'm curious to see how he awards science points. When I was working on impact probes, where they would allocate science points upon impact, I had the issue where the points were directly added to the stockpile and would remain even after you do revert. Wondering how he/she handles it.

As for the surface rover thing, I still haven't had time to give it a stab. Once MS19 is out and ROv3 are out, I'll check with Nathan if he has any ideas as to what's causing this and whether or not I can help out. If I do find a way to tweak the values, would you mind testing it out for us?

Just going back tot he tech tree and fairings. I'm even thinking that ultimately fuel tanks, apart from the fancy baloon and cryo tanks, could all be available on start. I mean, regardless of whether you can build a huge fuel tank, if you don't have the engine tech to launch them, it's not really giving you an unfair advantage so to speak. Just to not cause myself confusion what I might do is add these condensed parts into seperate 'free' nodes that stem from the start node. It's only to have them seperated in the event where I'd change my mind and find a way to implement them differently.

I love the things Tree Edit allows us to do, but the interface is quite uncomfortable at times. The funniest thing is how it resizes the columns of the included and available tech. You often can only read the first few letters of the part, making it super fun. Anyway, I digress with my woes of Tree Edit here. lol

With MS19's release, I'll be gathering feedback/opinions on how much 'data' is required for experiments. too little, too much, too long, wtvr. I don't really have anything to base myself on for those, so It's pretty much a series of stabs int he dark.

[andqui]

Based on the previous release, I think data might need to be increased, depending on the situation. "Precarious" or unstable situations such as high atmospheric flight should be as is, but data for landings, etc should be drastically increased. As it was earlier, there was no reason to sit on the moon for more than 10-15 minutes before leaving again after collecting the data. Compare that with how long some of the apollo missions spent before departing. Hypothetically (maybe not) you could make one experiment take a very long time (months/years) to justify the need for orbital labs and space stations.

[MedievalNerd]

Based on the previous release, I think data might need to be increased, depending on the situation. "Precarious" or unstable situations such as high atmospheric flight should be as is, but data for landings, etc should be drastically increased. As it was earlier, there was no reason to sit on the moon for more than 10-15 minutes before leaving again after collecting the data. Compare that with how long some of the apollo missions spent before departing. Hypothetically (maybe not) you could make one experiment take a very long time (months/years) to justify the need for orbital labs and space stations.

Yup, that sounds about right. I was specfically thinking that for early orbitals the amount of Data should be substantial enough so that you can't just pop your ship above the Karmian line, and do the experiment.

And yes, ground samples/study should definitely take a considerable amount of time as well! I'll go with much higher value and i'll see people's reaction at release.

Thanks,

[Guest]

I'd be happy to test anything you like for MS19/MS20, just let me know what exactly you would like me to look for and report on.

[andqui]

Yup, that sounds about right. I was specfically thinking that for early orbitals the amount of Data should be substantial enough so that you can't just pop your ship above the Karmian line, and do the experiment.

And yes, ground samples/study should definitely take a considerable amount of time as well! I'll go with much higher value and i'll see people's reaction at release.

Great, I'm looking forward to it.

[blipadouzi]

I'm truly interesting in both L-Tech and ScanSat. But if I want to get MS19 out the door relatively soon, I'd rather keep them out of this update, just so that I have more time to finalize this first update. Even before people started suggesting ScanSat it was already on my radar. (See what I did there?)

VERY glad to see you plan on eventually adding these, I'm in no rush to see them added, "one day" is good enough for me lol. Thanks for all your hard work.

[MedievalNerd]

Howdy all,

Mini-surprise, made possible by Nathan's awesome network of KSP friends. I message was relayed, and now you can load RPL_V18 directly from Tree Loader, you don't need Tree Edit anymore.

So this means that moving forward, all you folks will be able to enjoy the tree using Tree Loader.

Big thanks to Nathan & r4m0n for making this happen.

Nathan also, fed me some goodies to help with the update. So I'm pretty well setup now, just need time! I can safely say I miss being on work leave. lol

[Visari]

Awesome!

I am getting back into KSP again after a decent break, going through the process of clubbing the mighty lego castle that is KSP, to be able to build it back up again in my own style brick by brick.

But like before, there is a big piece missing, the dragon, a challenge.

No, seriously, there just aren't any mods out there that provide a proper tech tree other than yours, plus you're not just making it proper, you're going beyond that by making it better through new ways of science and creating alterations to the ways the tech tree improves engineering capabilities by tech levels.

Again, I salute you and hope this gets the appraisal it should get.