[1.12] Extraplanetary Launchpads v6.99.3

[Starstrider42]

Some tips about the stats:

While the experience and oversight ideas mentioned above may seem to be micro-management, that's far from my goal. At least initially, the most appropriate kerbal(s) will be automatically selected as overseers, and experience will be automatic, smooth (no levels like D&D), and relatively fine-grained (command, flight, construction, etc). I might add some features to enable micro-management, but I certainly don't want to force it.

One nice thing about experience when I get it going is it will give meaning to kerbal deaths.

Experience sounds fun, though it may overlap a little with the scope of other mods (e.g., FF).

However, I do think that, no matter how automated the new rules are, there needs to be more feedback so that people are reminded that productivity, experience, etc. exist. The right-click productivity display is handy, but only if you know to look for it.

[taniwha]

Oh, no argument about the need for some form of feedback. That was not the point of my post, so I avoided mentioning such. Actually, I had thought of adding some form of feedback before releasing 4.0, but it was in the hard-basket (design issues) and I wanted to get the release out. Then there was a slew of bugs to fix, a KSP release and another slew of bugs to fix. And me starting a new job the day after KSP's release.

I haven't done anywhere near as much work on EL as I want, let alone played KSP

[Hotblack Desiato]

just a quick question: what does kh actually mean? I read it as kilohours, but that doesn't match with the experienced production-time.

[taniwha]

just a quick question: what does kh actually mean? I read it as kilohours, but that doesn't match with the experienced production-time.

kh is indeed kilohours, but I did not write kh. I wrote Kh, which is kerbal-hours (as opposed to man-hours). Case matters in spelling, especially with units.

[skykooler]

Well, practically speaking, I've been waiting like 4 months for EPL to... achieve a more refined state before attempting some cool things with a Jool space colony. Now it seems Kerbin's chief export to Jool this coming quarter will be high school graduates who can successfully weld a beam.

Speaking from a "realistic" point of view, why are Kerbals too stupid to read an instruction manual allowed outside the janitorial staff room at KSC? I can understand varying rates of progress, but this is a space program, not a Miss America pageant. Monkeys ceased to be useful when the rockets mostly stopped exploding.

Speaking from a game design point of view, being stuck at 0% forever with no explanation is... I mean...

Ugh

Doesn't this give some incentive to not hire stupid Kerbals then? That's sort of the purpose of the astronaut selection center, so you can pick the best ones for the job.

[Josh Hawley]

seems to me like it just gives more incentive to edit your save file to change their stats...

[alphaxerosyx]

I've definitely gone wrong somewhere. I have a nice little base on Minmus (sort of. It's a couple of rovers tied together with pipes. Work in progress). The first rover had a rocket workshop, augers and kethane drills. The second one had a parts workshop, and empty ore can and and empty parts can. The third was a metal can and a load of pipes. I've piped the augers to the ore can, and activated the augers, got the pipes pumping, and... no ore. I am definitely sitting on an ore tile. I can see the augers aren't touching the ground, but I understand they're not animated, so that probably isn't what's wrong.

I'm lost. I was hoping to start mining and building stuff (yes I know I still need a smelter), to reach the point where I can rebuild my Minmus station in place, rather than be a (getting laggy now) mess of rovers.

Regarding crew:

Jeb arrived on Cheetah I, Bill exploded during landing Cheetah II, leaving Jeb to EVA and salvage the (mostly) intact rover. The workshop full of Kerbals Bill was bringing with him found a bar at KSC on their way to the launchpad, and never made it (seriously I hate when a crewed vessel magically becomes uncrewed if you happen to return to VAB). Bob brought Cheetah III down right on the work site, and chatted with Jeb while they attached pipes. Back at KSC, they're quite anxious to end the Cheetah project and proceed to launch project Haven, but might be convinced to commission a Cheetah IV, if Jeb can serenade them with his best Marvin Kerman impression.

EDIT: Cheetah IV is definitely a go. Building a smelter on site needs metal (Bob brought an empty can of metal and no smelter, rather than a full can of metal or an empty can and a smelter), the question is will the next poor sod need anything else? Crew for the workshop is up there in the to-do list, but I'm thinking of a functional station on barebones staff before fully staffing a non-functional one

Edited April 26, 2014 by alphaxerosyx

[Logris]

I can see the augers aren't touching the ground, but I understand they're not animated, so that probably isn't what's wrong.

That sounds like the problem. The augers do need to be below the surface.

They don't have collision meshes, so it is quite safe for them.

[alphaxerosyx]

That sounds like the problem. The augers do need to be below the surface.

They don't have collision meshes, so it is quite safe for them.

Ah ok... Will I need to totally redo Cheetah I, or is there some way I can shift them down a wee bit? I do have KAS installed, but I haven't managed to find a way to do this yet.

[Pezzhippo]

Small progress report on those (hypothetical) parts I mentioned a few pages back, have the smelter about 80% done, so I figured I'd share some screenies and see what folks think c:

Here's the basic sketch I started with (It's linked to a somewhat larger version)

I wanted to go for a semi-clean industrial feel that would mesh well with Baha's drills, while still fitting on my sort-of-standardised industrial landers as seen here:

This is my current Kethane base over on Ike

But I digress! Here's progress so far:

I was also particularly proud of how the foil on the ends turned out, so have a screenie of that too!

Hope you enjoy, comments, ideas and pointers welcome, expect more to come~ :3!

[Josh Hawley]

That part looks great! but... what is it? It says strong magnetic field on the side, so I would guess that it is an antimatter container, but that feels wrong because this is the EL thread.

[Pezzhippo]

That part looks great! but... what is it? It says strong magnetic field on the side, so I would guess that it is an antimatter container, but that feels wrong because this is the EL thread.

It is, in fact, the smelter. When I set out to design it, I was struck by a rather mind-boggling question: How on Kerbin do you smelt ore in zero-G or low gravity environments? The answer? Magnets.

Conventional blast furnaces need gravity to function the way they do, but here that wasn't an option for something that has to operate in aforementioned places, so the concept I arrived at (and I know this... probably wouldn't work for aluminium >___>) was to contain the molten ore via a magnetic field, and extract the resulting orbs of metal periodically for further processing.

My theory was, that any unwanted slag would rise to the surface of the orbs, because the pure metal content would be pushed inwards by the magnetic field. Once cooled, kerbals in the workshop would simply grind the slag "crust" off, leaving ready to use metal.

[Logris]

Ah ok... Will I need to totally redo Cheetah I, or is there some way I can shift them down a wee bit? I do have KAS installed, but I haven't managed to find a way to do this yet.

Sounds like it might need a redo.

Maybe you can get them to touch the ground by retracting the landing gear, but I wouldn't recommend leaving it like that long term. That tends to result in exploding ships when it loads the physics.

[Josh Hawley]

It is, in fact, the smelter. When I set out to design it, I was struck by a rather mind-boggling question: How on Kerbin do you smelt ore in zero-G or low gravity environments? The answer? Magnets.

Heating via induction! nice. I approve!

[taniwha]

I have two problems with EL's smelters as they are: they're too fast and use far too little power.

However, I have a solution: LFO powered furnace. The mainsail produces 2.42GW of power in its thrust (implying quite a bit more total). That's... a lot of power, far more than mobile smelters will ever need. Even the LV-909 produces 95MW. The LF/O ratio can be detuned to produce the carbon monoxide needed to reduce the ore. The heat can be used to drive the reaction and generate copious quantities of electricity. I just need to do some research and math for the balancing.

That covers the power requirements, which leaves the speed. That's simply a matter of dropping the rate to be more in line with how quickly it's used: maybe 1kg/s instead of the current 100kg/s (fast enough to keep an average workshop busy, but slow enough than an ideal workshop will outstrip the supply from one smelter).

As I said, I'm pretty happy with the 5Kh/t if it's taken as an average, though I might tweak it, but in the range of 1-10Kh/t (and then based on pad quality, too). Since the workshops are the bottle-neck, I don't see adjusting the metal production rate being a problem.

[alphaxerosyx]

I'm being annoying now, with all my questions....

But now I'm successfully mining ore, sucessfully storing ore... I have metal, I have rocket parts, I have a rocket workshop thingy (looks like a cat scratch post), a big parts workshop (looks like a submarine), pipes coming out of my eyeballs. I'd like to build a smelter on site, and since I have loads of metal (and parts), I'm thinking I should be able to build that by now. However, I'm definitely missing something, because the EL build UI doesn't appear to apply to this monstrous base. Do I need to bring up an orbital launch platform (the thing that resembles a snowflake), despite it being a surface base?

[Superfluous J]

I'm being annoying now, with all my questions....

But now I'm successfully mining ore, sucessfully storing ore... I have metal, I have rocket parts, I have a rocket workshop thingy (looks like a cat scratch post), a big parts workshop (looks like a submarine), pipes coming out of my eyeballs. I'd like to build a smelter on site, and since I have loads of metal (and parts), I'm thinking I should be able to build that by now. However, I'm definitely missing something, because the EL build UI doesn't appear to apply to this monstrous base. Do I need to bring up an orbital launch platform (the thing that resembles a snowflake), despite it being a surface base?

You need a part that can build ships (even your smelter is a "ship" as you had to "construct" it in the VAB). The orbital construction dock (the blue snowflake) is my favorite of these but you can also use the launchpad that folds out. I never have but I use the orbital construction dock in orbit and on the surface of several planets to good effect.

(shameless plug)

I have a working surface base on Gilly in episode 99 of my LP series. It uses the Baha Printer instead of the rocket workshop, and the Baha furnace instead of the smelter, and the Baha drills instead of the auger, but that's just because I like the looks of them. They work exactly the same as the ones that you're using.

[Booots]

Taniwha: Do you know why some of us have been having problems with root parts exploding immediately on clicking 'Finalize Build' on terraineous bodies? Most of the posts on the subject are on page 105 of this thread.

Thanks for looking into it!

[Mekan1k]

I know I have asked this question before- but does anyone have modded files so that the ships don't require resources to build? (Yes- cheaty, but I have my reasons....)

[xyberviri]

This mod is by far one of my favorites.

[taniwha]

Taniwha: Do you know why some of us have been having problems with root parts exploding immediately on clicking 'Finalize Build' on terraineous bodies? Most of the posts on the subject are on page 105 of this thread.

Thanks for looking into it!

I haven't had a chance to do much testing lately (been too tired). Only today did I get in some time, and I sent Jeb to within 2400km of the sun's surface only to have him die on reentry to Kerbin's atmosphere (DRE+hitting atmosphere at 10km/s is not a healthy combination). First bit of fun I've had in KSP for months :/

I know I have asked this question before- but does anyone have modded files so that the ships don't require resources to build? (Yes- cheaty, but I have my reasons....)

If Kethane is installed, then resource usage is enforced. Otherwise, you can edit your save to set ForceResourceUse to False.

[JuanxLink]

Trying to download the mod for the last 2 days, file is deeply corrupted.

[VaporTrail]

Corrupt file verification attempt.

Download attempt from link: http://taniwha.org/~bill/Extraplanetary_Launchpads_v4.1.2.zip

Download successful.

Comparing to known good version:

Extraplanetary_Launchpads_v4.1.2.zip - -Size: 22.0 MB (23,118,275 bytes)

Extraplanetary_Launchpads_v4.1.2 (1).zip - - Size: 22.0 MB (23,118,275 bytes)

File structure, identical.

File contents, identical.

Gotta be on your end JuanxLink.

[taniwha]

JuanxLink: wild guess: windows, maybe even explorer. Try right-clicking on the link and select "save as" or something similar. It sounds like the browser is writing the file in text mode rather than binary and thus corrupting the file for you (by changing any 10s to 13 and 10.

[Booots]

I haven't had a chance to do much testing lately (been too tired). Only today did I get in some time, and I sent Jeb to within 2400km of the sun's surface only to have him die on reentry to Kerbin's atmosphere (DRE+hitting atmosphere at 10km/s is not a healthy combination). First bit of fun I've had in KSP for months :/

Oh good! I'm glad you're getting the chance to have fun with KSP since I use your mod to have fun with it all the time. Just as long as you know about it. You're really good at tracking these things down. Thanks!

PS: I got my Pol base to build a ship by loading the base from the tracking station and pressing time accel before it jumped it down to the actual surface. Then, while in time accel, I clicked finalize and it built it properly while jumping back to 1x. This only worked once, though, and I forgot a Kethane tank on that ship.