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

[MedievalNerd]

Update!

Tested WAC-Bumper, Sputnik 1 & 2, and Explorer 1 experiments and they all work as intended!

Moving on!

Screw it! Will put placeholder Mercury & Gemini experiments! Tis the season!

EDIT:

Out of the blue, I think I figured out how we could have multi-part experiments. But that may be me being in a KSP induced trance... not sure.

Edited February 19, 2014 by MedievalNerd

[woot]

I'm really looking forward to the next update. I've downloaded a bunch of new mods but want to start a new career to get into them slowly and have chosen this tech tree.

[MedievalNerd]

I'm really looking forward to the next update. I've downloaded a bunch of new mods but want to start a new career to get into them slowly and have chosen this tech tree.

Howdy Woot!

Glad you are taking the time to check out RPL! Milestone 19 has been long overdue, but I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! Experiments have been verified ~80% of them, and not much is left to do. I have to build a desk tonight... ugh, but I'll jump back in for a little extra RPL time in the evening!

I CANNOT WAIT!!!@!@!@

[whorlwind]

Experiments have been verified ~80% of them, and not much is left to do. I have to build a desk tonight... ugh, but I'll jump back in for a little extra RPL time in the evening!

You know MN you don't have to do all beta testing yourself, as I'm sure there's several of us who would be happy to help you out with that sort of thing if you wanted.

[MarQan]

You know MN you don't have to do all beta testing yourself, as I'm sure there's several of us who would be happy to help you out with that sort of thing if you wanted.

Ready and able!

[asmi]

Howdy Woot!

Glad you are taking the time to check out RPL! Milestone 19 has been long overdue, but I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! Experiments have been verified ~80% of them, and not much is left to do. I have to build a desk tonight... ugh, but I'll jump back in for a little extra RPL time in the evening!

I CANNOT WAIT!!!@!@!@

I piece of advice if I may - DON'T RUSH! Take your time, especially since this release will force restarting campaign.

[MedievalNerd]

I piece of advice if I may - DON'T RUSH! Take your time, especially since this release will force restarting campaign.

Hey Asmi!

Yes, I also agree that rushing isn't something that one should do considering the implications that one must face if changes are made to the tech tree just after a recent update.

One thing I wanted to specify, is that although tech tree changes are binding and you can't switch mid game. Tweaks to experiments and other config/mm file related stuff can still be done as a hotfix. So I will spend most of the time making sure that the tech tree parts are well placed, and nothing is missing. That way if something is wrong with experiment B, I can just release a hotfix for my experiment file.

I just don't want to disappoint anybody either, I feel bad it's taking so long. :/

Thanks for the encouragement as always.

[kasperhangard]

Hey all, sorry if this has already been asked, but what is the difference between TAC and eclss?

[Guest]

Hey all, sorry if this has already been asked, but what is the difference between TAC and eclss?

TAC features:

Thunder Aerospace Corporation is proud to offer a sneak peak at our new Life Support system.

Many Kerbal lives were bravely sacrificed to bring you the latest in biological needs.

Features

Kerbals require resources to survive, whether in a vessel or on EVA: Food, Water, Oxygen, Electricity (for air quality and climate control)

They produce waste resources: CarbonDioxide, Waste, WasteWater

They will die if they go without resources for too long: 30 Kerbin days without food, 3 Kerbin days without water, 2 hours without Oxygen, and 2 hours without Electricity

Crewed pods come stocked with 1 day (24 hours) worth of resources.

When a Kerbal goes on EVA, he takes a half day (12 hours) of each resource with him in the EVA suit, taking from the pod that he was in.

Kerbals do require resources even when their vessel is not active, and they can die if you leave them alone for too long.

The system tries to warn when resources are low and again when resources run out. No guarantees. It no longer limits Time Warp.

Now includes recycling parts for converting CarbonDioxide back into Oxygen, WasteWater back into Water, filtering Oxygen out of IntakeAir, and splitting Water into Oxygen and Waste (hydrogren).

Now allows you to enable/disable the mod on a saved-game basis. No more uninstalling/reinstalling when switching between saved games.

ECLSS Features:

ECLSS mod.

Features:

- From now on each crewmember consumes oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, once they are outside breathable atmosphere (14km for Kerbin).

- Crew can not live without oxygen outside of breatheable atmosphere, and as such, they will die a horrible death if you won't supply them with sufficient supply of oxygen.

- Just in case worse comes to worst, crew can use O2 candles as emergency source of oxygen. But they won't last long, and they are HEAVY, so don't rely on them. Each capsule contains few of them.

- Contain oxygen regenerator, which could be used to reprocess some of CO2 back into oxygen. Consumes a considerable amount of electricity, so be prepared to supply it.

- From now on, when kerbal goes onto EVA, he takes RCS and oxygen from vessel's tanks. Upon return, any excess resources are returned to vessel tanks. Be careful - if there is no RCS onboard, kerbal might not be able to return to the vessel!!!

- If you'll forget about that, system will notify you once oxygen level lowers below caution or warning threshholds. These thresholds could be modified on per-vessel basis, by default they are 25% and 5% of onboard capacity.

- GUI added to just about any screen, which displays current O2/CO2 levels. In the Map and Tracking Station views, you can view that information for any vessel without having to switch to it. There is also summary screen which list all your vessels and essential ECLSS-related information about them.

- Package includes configuration file for ModuleManager that adds life support-related resources.

- Package also includes tanks for both oxygen and CO2, and regenerator, cortesy of awesome BobCat.

- and the KILLER FEATURE: ALL OF THAT is happenning AT ALL TIMES, FOR ALL VESSELS, INCLUDING INACTIVE, even when you are at the Space Center, or Tracking Station.

TAC tends to be easier on lower end systems and abit easier to get directly into using as a 1st life support mod with air/food/water and waste products "basic electricity tracking" for heating ect , also great for life support that works without being heavily detailed

ECLSS is a good deal more detailed with "advanced electricity tracking" even on ships not currently in focus but follows the same basic idea. If your system can handle having 4 or 5 "active" craft being tracked at a time, use eclss

[kasperhangard]

TAC features:

Thunder Aerospace Corporation is proud to offer a sneak peak at our new Life Support system.

Many Kerbal lives were bravely sacrificed to bring you the latest in biological needs.

Features

Kerbals require resources to survive, whether in a vessel or on EVA: Food, Water, Oxygen, Electricity (for air quality and climate control)

They produce waste resources: CarbonDioxide, Waste, WasteWater

They will die if they go without resources for too long: 30 Kerbin days without food, 3 Kerbin days without water, 2 hours without Oxygen, and 2 hours without Electricity

Crewed pods come stocked with 1 day (24 hours) worth of resources.

When a Kerbal goes on EVA, he takes a half day (12 hours) of each resource with him in the EVA suit, taking from the pod that he was in.

Kerbals do require resources even when their vessel is not active, and they can die if you leave them alone for too long.

The system tries to warn when resources are low and again when resources run out. No guarantees. It no longer limits Time Warp.

Now includes recycling parts for converting CarbonDioxide back into Oxygen, WasteWater back into Water, filtering Oxygen out of IntakeAir, and splitting Water into Oxygen and Waste (hydrogren).

Now allows you to enable/disable the mod on a saved-game basis. No more uninstalling/reinstalling when switching between saved games.

ECLSS Features:

ECLSS mod.

Features:

- From now on each crewmember consumes oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, once they are outside breathable atmosphere (14km for Kerbin).

- Crew can not live without oxygen outside of breatheable atmosphere, and as such, they will die a horrible death if you won't supply them with sufficient supply of oxygen.

- Just in case worse comes to worst, crew can use O2 candles as emergency source of oxygen. But they won't last long, and they are HEAVY, so don't rely on them. Each capsule contains few of them.

- Contain oxygen regenerator, which could be used to reprocess some of CO2 back into oxygen. Consumes a considerable amount of electricity, so be prepared to supply it.

- From now on, when kerbal goes onto EVA, he takes RCS and oxygen from vessel's tanks. Upon return, any excess resources are returned to vessel tanks. Be careful - if there is no RCS onboard, kerbal might not be able to return to the vessel!!!

- If you'll forget about that, system will notify you once oxygen level lowers below caution or warning threshholds. These thresholds could be modified on per-vessel basis, by default they are 25% and 5% of onboard capacity.

- GUI added to just about any screen, which displays current O2/CO2 levels. In the Map and Tracking Station views, you can view that information for any vessel without having to switch to it. There is also summary screen which list all your vessels and essential ECLSS-related information about them.

- Package includes configuration file for ModuleManager that adds life support-related resources.

- Package also includes tanks for both oxygen and CO2, and regenerator, cortesy of awesome BobCat.

- and the KILLER FEATURE: ALL OF THAT is happenning AT ALL TIMES, FOR ALL VESSELS, INCLUDING INACTIVE, even when you are at the Space Center, or Tracking Station.

TAC tends to be easier on lower end systems and abit easier to get directly into using as a 1st life support mod with air/food/water and waste products "basic electricity tracking" for heating ect , also great for life support that works without being heavily detailed

ECLSS is a good deal more detailed with "advanced electricity tracking" even on ships not currently in focus but follows the same basic idea. If your system can handle having 4 or 5 "active" craft being tracked at a time, use eclss

Thanks a great bunch mr. ECLSS it is!

[Ratzap]

ECLSS doesn't have food or water though and there are some decent textures for the TAC parts.

[gleedadswell]

Hey all, I've noticed a minor incompatibility. If you are using the Interstellar mod then Waste Heat is added. Early in the tech tree you have solar panels (which generate waste heat) but you have no parts that are able to "dump" waste heat. It makes interplanetary missions nearly impossible since when you go to time warp the waste heat builds up and then when it reaches critical levels your solar panels retract and you have a dead probe (time to do a save file edit...). For now I've gone into WarpPluginSettings.cfg and set

ThermalMechanicsDisabled = True

Which fixes the problem for now. Once I have thermal radiators I'll turn the thermal mechanics back on. So probably at least some of the thermal radiators in the Interstellar mod need to be made available in early tech nodes.

Cheers!

[woot]

Hey all, I've noticed a minor incompatibility. If you are using the Interstellar mod then Waste Heat is added. Early in the tech tree you have solar panels (which generate waste heat) but you have no parts that are able to "dump" waste heat. It makes interplanetary missions nearly impossible since when you go to time warp the waste heat builds up and then when it reaches critical levels your solar panels retract and you have a dead probe (time to do a save file edit...). For now I've gone into WarpPluginSettings.cfg and set

ThermalMechanicsDisabled = True

Which fixes the problem for now. Once I have thermal radiators I'll turn the thermal mechanics back on. So probably at least some of the thermal radiators in the Interstellar mod need to be made available in early tech nodes.

Cheers!

Interesting. While recognizing it's not a high priority, I'm hoping that the tree for the various mods is as well thought-out as possible, especially the advanced ones like Kethane and Interstellar, so that progression can be slow (like a mission or two per node even in the late game) and rewarding.

I suppose this might not be completely possible; in my last career I ended up with over 13000 science on a single mission to Jool and its moons, which finished the tech tree with several thousand left over. The more nodes there are at the end the better, as far as I'm concerned. Especially since the interstellar stuff has great potential for allowing new kinds of science missions, it'd be a shame if it didn't take more than a mission or two to unlock everything.

[gleedadswell]

Interesting. While recognizing it's not a high priority, I'm hoping that the tree for the various mods is as well thought-out as possible, especially the advanced ones like Kethane and Interstellar, so that progression can be slow (like a mission or two per node even in the late game) and rewarding.

And, as awesome as MedievalNerd is, he can't build his tech tree taking every other mod a player might conceivably play with into account. But Interstellar is one of the "recommended" mods to go with this one, so hopefully the waste heat issue will be dealt with eventually. I mostly posted my observation to help anyone else who might be having the same problem.

Cheers!

[Ratzap]

And, as awesome as MedievalNerd is, he can't build his tech tree taking every other mod a player might conceivably play with into account. But Interstellar is one of the "recommended" mods to go with this one, so hopefully the waste heat issue will be dealt with eventually. I mostly posted my observation to help anyone else who might be having the same problem.

Odd. Wasteheat never builds up for me and I have some big commsats just covered in solar panels. It stays solidly at 0.

[MedievalNerd]

Interesting. While recognizing it's not a high priority, I'm hoping that the tree for the various mods is as well thought-out as possible, especially the advanced ones like Kethane and Interstellar, so that progression can be slow (like a mission or two per node even in the late game) and rewarding.

I suppose this might not be completely possible; in my last career I ended up with over 13000 science on a single mission to Jool and its moons, which finished the tech tree with several thousand left over. The more nodes there are at the end the better, as far as I'm concerned. Especially since the interstellar stuff has great potential for allowing new kinds of science missions, it'd be a shame if it didn't take more than a mission or two to unlock everything.

Hi Woot,

If you look at the MS18 tree you'll notice that indeed things like Kethane, EP, KSPI, LAZOR, IR, have their mini trees located near the end of the tech lines.

Now about science. Up until the point where I'm able to create enough custom experiments to phase out the stock science, it's true that once you get access to the stock instruments, you can get crazy science by pretty much farming anyplace anywhere. (Unless it's stuff which isn't rerunnable).

This is one of the main reason why I wanted to have more specific probes/experiments as to avoid these situations that you can't get 20k in one trip. Using probe parts as the main science instrument sort of creates a sense of mission profile, rather than, 'the grand voyage of science collection'.

One thing is for sure, with all the restructuring going on, adding new experiments, etc. The tree costs will need to be revised and balanced as we move forward. This is where you fine people come in and give me feedback on how steep/low the cost curve is.

This not planned immediately, but in consideration, using MCE & the tech tree, we could create 'gate tech nodes' with artifically high costs, which would require you to complete the mission objective to get enough science to break through. This opens people to cheat by using that high payout to buy other stuff, but shame on them if they do. Anyway, this isn't in the immediate plans. Just an fyi.

[MedievalNerd]

Hey all, I've noticed a minor incompatibility. If you are using the Interstellar mod then Waste Heat is added. Early in the tech tree you have solar panels (which generate waste heat) but you have no parts that are able to "dump" waste heat. It makes interplanetary missions nearly impossible since when you go to time warp the waste heat builds up and then when it reaches critical levels your solar panels retract and you have a dead probe (time to do a save file edit...). For now I've gone into WarpPluginSettings.cfg and set

ThermalMechanicsDisabled = True

Which fixes the problem for now. Once I have thermal radiators I'll turn the thermal mechanics back on. So probably at least some of the thermal radiators in the Interstellar mod need to be made available in early tech nodes.

Cheers!

Howdy Gleedadswell,

Yes this was brought up right after MS18 release, when KSPI introduced this new mechanic. Talk about a quick curve ball! Yes, you can disable the heat gen, but I did intend placing heat dissipate at the beginning of the solar panel tech line.

Thanks for the reminder it had been a while.

[MedievalNerd]

And, as awesome as MedievalNerd is, he can't build his tech tree taking every other mod a player might conceivably play with into account. But Interstellar is one of the "recommended" mods to go with this one, so hopefully the waste heat issue will be dealt with eventually. I mostly posted my observation to help anyone else who might be having the same problem.

Cheers!

Don't you underestimate the awesomeness! lol, I'm kidding.

But yes, I really do intend to mesh the experience. It's just a bit hard when Fractal_UK keeps coming up with these amazing additions that I could'n't have anticipated in a previous release. I'll try to see if I can't have a quick chat with him to see if he can give me heads up when he's about to add a whole new system/feature/function.

All the mods that are in either essential or recommended, will get all the love they want. If someone strays from the list though, well then I can't do much for those. Since they'll wildly appear in random places within the tree.

[woot]

This is one of the main reason why I wanted to have more specific probes/experiments as to avoid these situations that you can't get 20k in one trip. Using probe parts as the main science instrument sort of creates a sense of mission profile, rather than, 'the grand voyage of science collection'.

Thanks for your comments. This quote is particularly apt, I think. Right now "Science" in the stock game is really more like "experience points".

[MedievalNerd]

Thanks for your comments. This quote is particularly apt, I think. Right now "Science" in the stock game is really more like "experience points".

No, thank you for yours. I'm just glad people are interested and provide feedback. It's truly invaluable.

I had a flash about having multi-tiered experiments. So that you have to them in a sequence. Maybe something like going to another body, doing a low space, approach, and landed experiment. If you miss on one of them oupsie! Sounds like a failed mission.

I'm considering adding randomness to whether or not the experiment was successful. But I'll put a poll up for that after MS19.

Cheers,

[whorlwind]

I'm considering adding randomness to whether or not the experiment was successful. But I'll put a poll up for that after MS19.

Personally I don't feel that would add anything unless there was an option to somehow learn from your "mistakes" and develop better science equipment. If we strapped a kitchen thermometer to a rocket and it exploded, but gave us the idea (or science points) to research a better thermometer, I can see that improving the experience. Otherwise you're just having to repeat the same experiment with the exact same equipment just because a dice throw went wrong. While that may be somewhat realistic, realism that adds nothing in the way of challenge or fun seems rather pointless.

Any chance of seeing MS19 released this weekend?

[MedievalNerd]

Personally I don't feel that would add anything unless there was an option to somehow learn from your "mistakes" and develop better science equipment. If we strapped a kitchen thermometer to a rocket and it exploded, but gave us the idea (or science points) to research a better thermometer, I can see that improving the experience. Otherwise you're just having to repeat the same experiment with the exact same equipment just because a dice throw went wrong. While that may be somewhat realistic, realism that adds nothing in the way of challenge or fun seems rather pointless.

Any chance of seeing MS19 released this weekend?

Ultimately, I'd like a combination of researching more accurate instruments, and perhaps, and this is a long shot. Figure out fields that KSPI use like for antimatter collection and the likes, and have experiments be more accurate in key locations more so than just 'the correct situation'.

But this is far from being something I'll start working on.

EDIT: I'm finalizing experiments, and working on integrated antennas for early probes. Then it's rehaul of antenna ranges. Make the antenna/dish tech line. And the dreaded tech tree sweep... yikes! lol (Make sure all new/old/modified parts are in the right spots). Then I need to make an MM patch file for the Real Fuels & Fairings tech size/performance restrictions. And then, tada!

Edited February 22, 2014 by MedievalNerd

[MedievalNerd]

The madness in progress!

hebergement d image

[m_robber]

Looking good, Medieval! So much to unlock! With both RPL for KSP and the new South Park game coming out soon, I'm starting to feel like Cartman waiting for the Nintendo Wii to come out.

[kasperhangard]

The madness in progress!

http://s28.postimg.org/j2s280jv1/RPLMS19_RC3_Sneak_Peek.png

hebergement d image

So, is this the dreaded tech tree sweep?

The tree looks amazing!