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

[asmi]

Yup, everything in all the packs will be double checked in case they sneakily moved into another node!

Thanks! And few more things if I may. I've been playtesting ECLSS 2.0 whole weekend and since I couldn't make myself play KSP without RSS for any significant amount of time, I've been going through your career tree.

1. Please stuff BobCat's Soviet Engines into appropriate nodes. Right now they all are in a single node (500 science one - forgot its name) which doesn't make a lot of sense - for example RD-171M shows up before RD-170 And once I got that, I could delete pretty much all the rest of the engines as these are enough to get just about everywhere.

2. Make AEIS and NP packs required instead of optional since it's impossible to get to GEO with only KW engines (I've tried that and was not successful even when I clustered a ton of them, but I was launching from Baikonur (45.9 north latitude). Also revisit engines heat production as that early RL-10 overheats way too quickly if the stage is large enough - which is counterintuitive BTW.

3. There are issues with certain engines' attachments points (but I guess this is more of RO issue than yours, but it still affects the end result). For example, Ariane-5 US engine's bottom attachment point is in the middle of the engine, as result it's impossible to attach lower stage to it.

4. Aforementioned "500-science" engine node contains engines that are wider than 3m which is the widest fuel tank available.

5. I'd suggest you to revisit fairings' positions in the tree as getting that 500 science node requires launching stuff above GSO, which requires "building" solar wings from girders (example here)and that requires using wide fairings (I used 4m KW Fairings modded by Nathan for me to launch that example, which oddly enough ended up being in planes node). I play with RT and a player would probably have to launch at least one GSO sat so that he'll have comm coverage near apogee to actually run experiments. I've managed to come up with the way to do it using RT's flight computer (which allows you to pre-program just about any sequence of events, invoking action groups, stagings and so forth so that they could be executed without comm coverage, but I had to spend almost an hour in Excel calculating exact mission profile and timeline to get timings just right).

[MedievalNerd]

Thanks! And few more things if I may. I've been playtesting ECLSS 2.0 whole weekend and since I couldn't make myself play KSP without RSS for any significant amount of time, I've been going through your career tree.

1. Please stuff BobCat's Soviet Engines into appropriate nodes. Right now they all are in a single node (500 science one - forgot its name) which doesn't make a lot of sense - for example RD-171M shows up before RD-170 And once I got that, I could delete pretty much all the rest of the engines as these are enough to get just about everywhere.

2. Make AEIS and NP packs required instead of optional since it's impossible to get to GEO with only KW engines (I've tried that and was not successful even when I clustered a ton of them, but I was launching from Baikonur (45.9 north latitude). Also revisit engines heat production as that early RL-10 overheats way too quickly if the stage is large enough - which is counterintuitive BTW.

3. There are issues with certain engines' attachments points (but I guess this is more of RO issue than yours, but it still affects the end result). For example, Ariane-5 US engine's bottom attachment point is in the middle of the engine, as result it's impossible to attach lower stage to it.

4. Aforementioned "500-science" engine node contains engines that are wider than 3m which is the widest fuel tank available.

5. I'd suggest you to revisit fairings' positions in the tree as getting that 500 science node requires launching stuff above GSO, which requires "building" solar wings from girders (example here)and that requires using wide fairings (I used 4m KW Fairings modded by Nathan for me to launch that example, which oddly enough ended up being in planes node). I play with RT and a player would probably have to launch at least one GSO sat so that he'll have comm coverage near apogee to actually run experiments. I've managed to come up with the way to do it using RT's flight computer (which allows you to pre-program just about any sequence of events, invoking action groups, stagings and so forth so that they could be executed without comm coverage, but I had to spend almost an hour in Excel calculating exact mission profile and timeline to get timings just right).

#1 - Bobcat's engines that come with RftsEngines, or his actual mod pack? Because I haven't actually installed/placed that mod. But I intend too.

#2 - Very true about NP & AEIS. As for engine heat production I'd have to differ that to Nathan as I'm using his engine configs, and I wouldn't want to pretend to know how to balance this.

#3 - Hmm, we'd have to hunt down whether it's an RO or the actual mod itself.

#4 - Yes, with Stretchy you get fuel tanks that go past 5M? (Unless you eman a bigger engine is available before a tank of matching size is available, that may be caused by me lagging behind with MS19, with changes to RftsEngine.)

#5 - Fairings will be revisited. Ultimately they will be available on start, and those nodes will be reduced cost/weight. (theoretical nodes as opposed to part nodes)

I'll have to look into that last point in greater detail, at work right now but still wanted to give feedback!

Thank you for taking the time to write this up,

[asmi]

#1 - Bobcat's engines that come with RftsEngines, or his actual mod pack? Because I haven't actually installed/placed that mod. But I intend too.

I mean this pack: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-22soviet-engines-pack-v1-0/ It contains very realistic 1:1 models of several real life Soviet/Russian engines. Just make sure you DON'T install "0.64-ization" folder.

#2 - Very true about NP & AEIS. As for engine heat production I'd have to differ that to Nathan as I'm using his engine configs, and I wouldn't want to pretend to know how to balance this.

Indeed that could be RF issue. Will talk to Nathan once he gets back home.

#3 - Hmm, we'd have to hunt down whether it's an RO or the actual mod itself.

It's probably RO, but I was just writing whatever issues I remember to run into over weekend's testing.

#4 - Yes, with Stretchy you get fuel tanks that go past 5M? (Unless you eman a bigger engine is available before a tank of matching size is available, that may be caused by me lagging behind with MS19, with changes to RftsEngine.)

It's the latter one.

#5 - Fairings will be revisited. Ultimately they will be available on start, and those nodes will be reduced cost/weight. (theoretical nodes as opposed to part nodes)

That actually makes sense. I would probably think about doing the same for structural parts (like girders) - since once you get access to smaller ones you can always build larger ones and the only issues is you gonna run up parts count.

I'll have to look into that last point in greater detail, at work right now but still wanted to give feedback!

I'm at work too, so I'm writing that stuff as I recall it

Thank you for taking the time to write this up,

You're very welcome! Honestly I was very proud of myself after I've managed to calculate entire high-orbit mission using pen, paper, calculator and Excel, and then programmed it into RT's flight computer to watch it unfold! So kudos to you for putting this all together!

Another thing I just recalled - maybe you can consider splitting second "manned" node and making 3man pod available earlier (and cheaper) than the rest of the stuff. The reason is I balance my ECLSS so that 1man capsule would have consumables only for 2-3 days flight (so nominal use would be early Vostok-like missions, plus shuttling crew to and from LEO stations). Besides it make sense to force player to send multi-man crew to the Moon for mission safety standpoint (yes don't tell me about N-1 - I know all about it ) And you can also consider adding separate nodes for space stations (using BobCat's Soviet pack - you can create entire Salyut-Mir series using DOS part from his pack) - and maybe some station experiments - like staying on a station for X amount of days? That would be cool!

[MedievalNerd]

You're very welcome! Honestly I was very proud of myself after I've managed to calculate entire high-orbit mission using pen, paper, calculator and Excel, and then programmed it into RT's flight computer to watch it unfold! So kudos to you for putting this all together!

No wonder you get along with Nathan, you are also equally mad! <3

I`m not at that level of math yet! But I am interested into investigating automation a little more and figure out how one could do exactly what you just described.

That is impressive to say the least! I just move parts in a tech tree, and write horrible code that apparently holds together.

Make a video of that code/mission! I want to see!

[asmi]

No wonder you get along with Nathan, you are also equally mad! <3

I'm actually worse - Nathan himself said so

I`m not at that level of math yet! But I am interested into investigating automation a little more and figure out how one could do exactly what you just described.

The math is actually surprisingly simple. It's basically a vis-viva equation plus some trigonometry to figure out inclination change and launch azimuth to 51.6 orbit from Baikonur's Site 1.

Make a video of that code/mission! I want to see!

I don't quite know how could I make a video out of tons of my paper which I used to figure out formulas so that I could stuff them into Excel The actual mission was totally automatic from parking orbit insertion - I programmed everything into RT on the pass over ground station following insertion, and then the rest or it was just watching events unfold and timewarping as necessary. It was exciting for me precisely I knew what it took for me to figure it all out, but I doubt anybody else would find it so interesting.

[MedievalNerd]

I don't quite know how could I make a video out of tons of my paper which I used to figure out formulas so that I could stuff them into Excel The actual mission was totally automatic from parking orbit insertion - I programmed everything into RT on the pass over ground station following insertion, and then the rest or it was just watching events unfold and timewarping as necessary. It was exciting for me precisely I knew what it took for me to figure it all out, but I doubt anybody else would find it so interesting.

I was more referring to setting up the mission and executing it. It might sound nerdy, but I'd find it cool to see it play out.

[Draft]

A note regarding the size of stretchy tanks available at each tech node, the config that stretchysrb uses to determine how wide the supertretchies can get doesn't work with the rocketry nodes in this tech tree. It's not terribly complicated to fix, and if you make another minipack that's definitely something I would like to see included.

[NathanKell]

asmi: sounds like the issue may be you're using RealEngines with this tree rather than RftSEngines (given the reference to Ariane 5); the latter is what it's designed for. If you're using RealEngines, engines may well not be in the right technodes because in RftS they have different roles/eras.

This also might account for heat issues; SFJackBauer just released an update that fixes some heat issues (in the RO thread); see if that helps?

And that hand-designed launch sounds super awesome.

(Alas I am away for Two! Whole! Weeks! without desktop, but I can at least post to forum and I *should* be able to run VC# on this laptop, so some stuff may get done. )

And yes, I did say so myself. You are.

(Oh, btw, I thought I fixed those two large high-thrust engines you were bugging me about in RftS, but apparently not. Well, they're fixed now, so there should be no single-chamber engines that has more than 10% or so more thrust than an F-1A, even at present tech level, and same for four-chamber / RD-170. Uploading soon.)

Draft: ah, crap. Ok. Well, they are changeable via ModuleManager (just ! each old value and add new ones--or just add new ones period) as of 1.5.7.

[Draft]

That makes it even easier if MM can grok it, can just slip it next to the other tweaks RPL makes.

[whorlwind]

Any chance if the next release is going to take much longer we might be able to get a patch with just your new experiments? My progress is feeling a bit stuck after moon landing with the high node costs currently.

[MedievalNerd]

Nah, this weekend should do it. I was hoping to get it done last weekend, but I got massive fever and became extremely stupid. So it wasn't a good Idea to do much during that time.

And the experiments are using a new version of the plugin, so that wouldnt' work per say. Not to mention that most of the experiments people have seen won't be there anymore. Replaced with my quasi-historical replica of the early probe launches by the US & USSR.

[Guest]

Hi Medieval Nerd,

Will there be described "order" to the new custom experiments? Something that will help to ID the order in which missions, who's parts exist in the same "start" node, are met to be done? thanks

[whorlwind]

Ah, so this will be a fresh start sort of update, fair enough. Sorry you got sick, hope you're fully recovered now!

[MedievalNerd]

Hi Medieval Nerd,

Will there be described "order" to the new custom experiments? Something that will help to ID the order in which missions, who's parts exist in the same "start" node, are met to be done? thanks

I think I put the years the experiments were carried out in parenthesis. (1957)

But I'd really like to structure a whole tree for probes. Such as having branches for each body/group of bodies, with stems that have more advanced experiments for each. Which they themselves could have research requirements. Reading that over it might not make a lot of sense, but it'll be more obvious when you look at the new tree.

Ah, so this will be a fresh start sort of update, fair enough. Sorry you got sick, hope you're fully recovered now!

Yes it will and thank you, today was the first day that my brain wasn't overheating. (What we call fever) Future updates should be building upon this base though, this first release was a sort of trial for the plugin/concept. Since people have shown interest, well I decided to take it up a notch and try to make something interesting for us to enjoy. KSP is already awesome, but I'm sure we can make it awesomer! (It's ok to use made up words sometimes, and this is one of them.)

Work is still always there though, which is definitely not helping. It was much easier to work on RPL when I was on work leave.

Edited February 6, 2014 by MedievalNerd

[kasperhangard]

Nah, this weekend should do it. I was hoping to get it done last weekend, but I got massive fever and became extremely stupid. So it wasn't a good Idea to do much during that time.

I would love this! The holidays are coming right after the weekend!

[Romby]

Could find the information the last couple of pages back. Will you only add more science experiments in next patch or will there also be added more mods to techtree?

[MedievalNerd]

Could find the information the last couple of pages back. Will you only add more science experiments in next patch or will there also be added more mods to techtree?

MS19 change log (off the top of my head)

* Complete overhaul of early Probe experiments. (replaced with quasi-historical probes by the US & USSR)

* Adding more generic post Moon experiments. (For Venus & Mars)

* New Chemical release function for Custom Experiment Plugin. (Simulating releasing chemical trail for tracking. (IE, Luna2))

* Rehaul of Probe tech branches.

* LAZOR & Infernal Robotics sub trees.

* Going to add Bobcat's Soviet Engines.

* Fairings available on start, so tech nodes will reduce cost/weight, and increase possible max size. (This is thanks to Nathan's and/or E-Dogs implementation of size being dependant on tech nodes(for the stretchy tanks)).

* Hand rolled ranges for antennas and dishes. (Remote tech)

* New Tech Tree branches for antennas & dishes.

That's what I can recall off the top of my head, I have a full list at home.

[Romby]

ok cool. Was hoping for FASA and AIES. But ok, can imagine how much work it is (probally even more than i think). New experiments are really cool though.

[Ratzap]

Now can you people stop distracting him with these questions long enough to actually finish it?

[MedievalNerd]

ok cool. Was hoping for FASA and AIES. But ok, can imagine how much work it is (probally even more than i think). New experiments are really cool though.

FASA & AIES are both there. I'll rejiggy the OP and put more essentials as some have pointed out for AIES. (And as soon as I start manned experiments, FASA is definitely must!)

[Romby]

FASA & AIES are both there. I'll rejiggy the OP and put more essentials as some have pointed out for AIES. (And as soon as I start manned experiments, FASA is definitely must!)

Ohh ok. Saw both AIES and FASA in the essentials on first page. But ingame the parts are all over the place. So though they weren´t fully implemented in techtree.

[MedievalNerd]

Ohh ok. Saw both AIES and FASA in the essentials on first page. But ingame the parts are all over the place. So though they weren´t fully implemented in techtree.

They 'were', but each time a mod gets updated with new parts, they will fall into their 'stock' tech node. Which usually will not make any sense to RPL's layout. I kept the stock nodes and tried to use them as logically as possible, but with all the overlap of the stock tree, it wasn't possible to keep every stock node in a logical place. :/

[Guest]

Quick request (well i hope it could be a "quick" change),

I have been trying some micro solar/Jupiter probes out (sub metric 1 ton) and have found the lack of a "high in space" temperature reading odd (and sometimes causing me to have carried "dead weight" due to falling short by under 10km on my fly-by's). Although its a single scenario (per body) reading and may seem minor, i CAN manually read the temperature between near/high space of earth, the moon, venus and mars (and there seems to be a notable difference between them in some cases). Would it require alot of work to insert a "high in space" reading capability into the thermometer? Seeing as the Sci Jr, gravity detector, goo, geiger counter (and some other experiments) all can all be used in both "near" & "high" space with important results shouldnt temperature also have this feature? In the case of the sun i would think the differences would not only be noteworthy but of a scientifically value (even if for the value they give on the environment the craft would occupy).

Sorry to make a feature request so close to MS19 release.

NOTE: I did mention this before but the "explorer" core (from FASA?) seems to have unlimited RT2 range and is also immune to the "line of sight" rule. unsure if this will be the same part you are using for your custom explorer experiments but thought i should mention it again.

[MedievalNerd]

Quick request (well i hope it could be a "quick" change),

I have been trying some micro solar/Jupiter probes out (sub metric 1 ton) and have found the lack of a "high in space" temperature reading odd (and sometimes causing me to have carried "dead weight" due to falling short by under 10km on my fly-by's). Although its a single scenario (per body) reading and may seem minor, i CAN manually read the temperature between near/high space of earth, the moon, venus and mars (and there seems to be a notable difference between them in some cases). Would it require alot of work to insert a "high in space" reading capability into the thermometer? Seeing as the Sci Jr, gravity detector, goo, geiger counter (and some other experiments) all can all be used in both "near" & "high" space with important results shouldnt temperature also have this feature? In the case of the sun i would think the differences would not only be noteworthy but of a scientifically value (even if for the value they give on the environment the craft would occupy).

Sorry to make a feature request so close to MS19 release.

NOTE: I did mention this before but the "explorer" core (from FASA?) seems to have unlimited RT2 range and is also immune to the "line of sight" rule. unsure if this will be the same part you are using for your custom explorer experiments but thought i should mention it again.

Howdy,

You can yourself manually edit the situation mask for the thermometer. Go through it's .cfg file and locate all the situation masks. On the wiki for KSP, there is a list which explains what situation masks does what. It's based on this hexedecimal thing, or the word for it eludes me. But it's quite easy.

FASA's explorer 1 has unlimited range because it's not include in the default MM files for RT2. We'll have to make one ourselves.

And again, just as a side note. Whenever I release a version, and another mod makes an update, whatever new parts were added will by default have funky results. Be it in their location in the tech tree, or their functionality. (Best example would be as you pointed out, The FASA explorer 1 core not having the RT2 module.)

[sidfu]

i have a question are stock nodes in this tree also so for mods thats not on list work with this?