[1.12] Extraplanetary Launchpads v6.99.3

[Kiel Eire]

Anyone help?

Would be much appreciated

[dzikakulka]

@kcl202

Open your persistent.sfs (save file) in notepad, search for "ExSettings". Change 'ForceResourceUse' to '= True'. I guess. Haven't tried it tho.

Edit: Backup stuff first as always.

[taniwha]

dzikakulka: Yes, that is the correct fix.

kcl202: Sorry, both your posts were while I was at work.

[Kiel Eire]

Thank you guys! Off to a better Career!

[Booots]

No, there's no way to limit craft size. EL doesn't do any size checks at all, just mass, and that's for build times and resource costs. That said, the feature I'm currently working on will need size checks to figure out placement, so such may be possible in the future.

In the meantime, read "The Dog Who Wouldn't Be" by Farley Mowat, particularly chapter 10, "The Cruise of the Coot".

Thanks for continuing development on this. I'm excited to see what this new feature is and how your idea of terrain leveling pans out. Cheers!

P.S. Great book, btw. Mowat is from near where I grew up. It's not a long book, though, does this mean the update isn't far away?

[forsaken1111]

No, there's no way to limit craft size...

Seems to me that the easiest way to ensure your craft fits inside the shipyard superstructure is to build it inside that superstructure in the VAB when designing it and remove the shipyard bit at the end. Does that make sense?

[taniwha]

Thanks for continuing development on this. I'm excited to see what this new feature is and how your idea of terrain leveling pans out. Cheers!

P.S. Great book, btw. Mowat is from near where I grew up. It's not a long book, though, does this mean the update isn't far away?

Not so much terrain leveling, but a way to deal with the terrain. However, at the rate things are going, it might be a good idea to write a treatise on the interesting words Mowat uses.

Seems to me that the easiest way to ensure your craft fits inside the shipyard superstructure is to build it inside that superstructure in the VAB when designing it and remove the shipyard bit at the end. Does that make sense?

That would work, but I'm not sure it's the easiest way. Probably the easiest way is to just build it and see what explodes.

[passinglurker]

the hangar mod has a way to check for craft size before spawning a ship from storage maybe it would be worth poking around in their code? being able to limit size or parts used in construction based on where you are in the tech tree could have an interesting effect in career mode

[Autochton]

@taniwha, does EPL support multiple parts types, or only the one? Specifically, I was thinking of having three 'tiers' of parts (plus possibly adding a part type for nuclear fission), made from different raw materials, with each allowing construction of more advanced parts. Could something like that be done with EPL, now or in the future?

[taniwha]

Autochton: actually, the basic support is there (I have plans for even more than just three resources^* and did most of the work prior to 4.0), and the required changes to take advantage of it should be relatively small: extend BuildCost.cs to work out what resources are needed to build a part (instead of just RocketParts), and then I guess use BuildCost in the recycler for figuring out what might be extractable from a recycled vessel.

The real work is in creating suitable recipes for all those parts out there. However, most of it can probably be automated: basic metal for structural (includes tanks), high temperature metal for engines, semiconductors for command pods at the like, insulation for cryogenic tanks...

In fact, I would like to phase out RocketParts in favor of things like:

• structural metal. This would represent aluminum and titanium alloys. Probably the most widely used resource
  
• refractory metal. Represents iron, tungsten, and a few other metals for which I've forgotten the names (high temp, stronger than titanium for the mass despite being denser than iron, but nasty to work). Might even include magnesium oxide even though that's not a metal.
  
• glass
  
• plastics
  
• semiconductors
  
• ...
  

^*It seems the realism crowd would appreciate fairly detailed recipes, but I consider that too much for most people, so I'd do it something like the RF/MFT split.

That said, I have way too much on my plate right now to tackle it.

[AlonzoTG]

=(

I'm getting crash here.

This is one of the roughest mods in the modpack I use on my dmp server. I had to make extensive changes to it to make it acceptable for inclusion. I only did this because it is essential to have a viable remote assembly facility when playing with lots of planet factory planets. Due to the brokenness of the animated launchapads, I only have the orbital dock on one of my starships.... Last night I set up a burn and went to bed, I had flown the ship before and I didn't think it would tear itself apart, well it did. =(

I spent today cleaning up the mess.... When I turned my attention toward rebuilding, I realized I could streamline the design of my ship by building it on orbit as I could omit numerous docking rings and adaptors. I sent up a mofoton of metal (A 350 ton slug of the stuff..) and used it to re-build the ship. Enough of the original ship was still intact that it could still fabricate its own replacement parts. Keep in mind, that before it started falling apart, the starship weighed 2,000 tons and a purely theoretical dv of around 5,000 m/sec.

The specs of the part I was trying to build was 169 tons dry, with 464 tons of resources. mechjeb reports a vac dv of 9590 m/sec and a start twr (kerbin) of 0.39 which is just fine when you're already in orbit, or about 30% of the entire ship I had up there.

The previous version of this design, which I had been launching from the ground, weighed 430 tons on orbit, before refueling.

So I sit there on high warp, occasionally re-starting the parts converter which is much faster than the slave labor and finally I am at finalize build...

I click that and BOOM!!!! the subassembly appears briefly but then It crashes to the tracking station where the entire UI is foobar and there are glitches everywhere, there is nothing to do but kill the program. =(

My buzz is throughly killed. =(((

I thought the entire point of building on orbit was to be able to build HUUUUUUUUUUUGE stuff without having to worry about launching it in pieces and assembling it into a flight-worthy structure on orbit.

crap, /me notices that one of the attach nodes on the nacelle tanks was missing, design was broken to begin with... =(

[AlonzoTG]

update to previous, looks like there's a cross-interraction with mechjeb going on. any ideas for a workaround?

[LOG 17:41:03.321] [FLIGHT GLOBALS]: Switching To Vessel Starship Bow OC ----------------------

[LOG 17:41:03.330] stage manager resuming...

[LOG 17:41:03.334] [iR GUI] vessel probeStackLarge

[LOG 17:41:03.334] [iR GUI] 0 groups

[LOG 17:41:03.335] Vessel assembly complete!

[LOG 17:41:03.335] stage manager starting...

[LOG 17:41:06.813] [MechJeb2] Focus changed! Forcing Life Sciences Starship to save

[ERR 17:41:08.006] MechJeb module MechJebModuleStageStats threw an exception in OnFixedUpdate: System.ArgumentException: An element with the same key already exists in the dictionary.

at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[Part,MuMech.FuelNode].Add (.Part key, MuMech.FuelNode value) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToDictionary[Part,Part,FuelNode] (IEnumerable`1 source, System.Func`2 keySelector, System.Func`2 elementSelector, IEqualityComparer`1 comparer) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToDictionary[Part,Part,FuelNode] (IEnumerable`1 source, System.Func`2 keySelector, System.Func`2 elementSelector) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at MuMech.FuelFlowSimulation..ctor (System.Collections.Generic.List`1 parts, Boolean dVLinearThrust) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at MuMech.MechJebModuleStageStats.StartSimulation () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at MuMech.MechJebModuleStageStats.TryStartSimulation () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at MuMech.MechJebModuleStageStats.OnFixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at MuMech.MechJebCore.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

[LOG 17:41:08.418] [544.5616] DarkMultiPlayer: Setting spectate lock

[WRN 17:41:08.443] [PartJoint]: None of the provided nodes was valid!

[LOG 17:41:08.983] [EL]

{

SMA = 17093548.4030748

ECC = 0.859426132710733

INC = 1.37930788873447

LPE = 306.678832805453

LAN = 58.5270876601787

MNA = 1.80713946553649

EPH = 891578.16657066

REF = 1

}

[-25188399.844923, -11869968.9877865, 610828.356918611]

[LOG 17:41:08.983] [EL]

{

SMA = 17093526.3724643

ECC = 0.859425849688235

INC = 1.37929050449993

LPE = 306.678431549433

LAN = 58.5274170668415

MNA = 1.80729194282867

EPH = 891583.811009867

REF = 1

}

[-25188389.1334781, -11869931.0887539, 610821.972466744]

[WRN 17:41:08.985] [HighLogic]: =========================== Scene Change : From FLIGHT to TRACKSTATION =====================

[taniwha]

AlonzoTG: please read and follow the directions in this guide. In addition, I need your location, orbital velocity, and the heading of the orbital construction dock relative to the orbit.

[Autochton]

taniwha Awesomesauce. You say basic support is there - how basic at present?

... I'm kinda tempted to offer my assistance with the EPL side of this project, though my own time is rather scarce as well... But my ISRU mod ideas just will not stop buzzing around my head, dammit! :-)

[juanml82]

I don't recognize that part, but you don't need it.

To build, you need three things:

• Either the Orbital Dock, one of the two Launchpads, or the Runway (they differ only in theme, any of them can build any ship in any situation). All except the Orbital Dock must be unfolded with the right-click menu.
  
• An on-board supply of RocketParts. You don't need the full supply at once, so you can top it up as construction proceeds.
  
• A crew of reasonably smart kerbals. Kerbals will get the most work done if they're in the blue Workshop part (not the Kerbal Rocket Workshop, that part's obsolete), followed by the science lab, hitchhiker, and any command pods. Put your smart kerbals where they will do the most good (e.g. the workshop) and your stupid kerbals where they will do the least harm (e.g. command pods). You can right-click on any crewed part and see its "efficiency" to see how good your Kerbal placement is. The higher your ship's total efficiency, the faster you build.

To build, right-click on your builder part (e.g. the orbital dock), open the construction window, then pick the desired ship from the VAB, SPH, or subassembly lists. You'll be given the expected resource costs for the ship. Only the RocketParts cost matters at first. Once the ship's hull is finished, the same window will pop up and you can choose to transfer resources such as fuel.

That should be enough to get you started.

If you have Kethane installed, you can also manufacture RocketParts on site. This is a bit more involved:

• The Orbital Mass Detector and Magnetometer can identify ore deposits from orbit. See Kethane for instructions on how to do orbital surveys.
  
• A ship with an Auger can mine ore if it lands on a deposit. This works much like the Kethane drills.
  
• Any of the smelter parts can convert ore (once on board) into metal. Metal is the densest EL resource, so it's the most efficient to transport.
  
• If you don't like mining, you can also fly ships into a recycling bin to convert them into metal. The recycling bin must be activated from the right-click menu, to keep it from voraciously devouring things it shouldn't.
  
• The Workshop can convert metal into RocketParts, which you can use as above.
  

Hope that helps.

Ok, I'm planning in setting up a factory in Vall's orbit (or Laythe. Or Duna. Not sure yet) so before I send incomplete ships, let me see if I have it straight:

I have both Kethane and Karbonite installed. However, the raw resource I need isn't Kethane or Karbonite, but "Ore", which is discovered with the scanner that comes with this mod, right? And this "ore" might or might not be at the same spot Kethane or a Karbonite hotspot is located, right?

Then, once I discover it, I need to send a ship with the mining drills included in this mod. Kethane or Karbonite drills won't work, right?

The next step is to have a smelter part in the miner or a ship docked to the miner/tied with a KAS pipe so I convert "ore" into metal.

Then I ship "metal" to something with a Workshop (that's the part where it's best to have ten kerbals with low stupidity), which will convert it into "rocketparts"

Finally, the Orbital Dock, launchpad or Runway, which must be part of the same vessel of the Workshop turn those "rocket parts" into any ship I have saved. Question, is the ship produced fully fueled or I also need a refueling station to load it with fuel?

And is it better to build in orbit, meaning I need to ship metal from the surface or, if I'm mining a low gravity body without an atmosphere, is it better to set the rig in the ground?

[taigan242]

I'm having problems with my orbital construction site. It seems that my orbital factories are bugged, it says there isn't enough room for more rocket parts but every container is empty there is plenty of ore and metal and crew and I had successfully built other craft earlier. Any ideas?

[taniwha]

taniwha Awesomesauce. You say basic support is there - how basic at present?

... I'm kinda tempted to offer my assistance with the EPL side of this project, though my own time is rather scarce as well... But my ISRU mod ideas just will not stop buzzing around my head, dammit! :-)

If you find the time, the help would be appreciated.

Basic support = without this, you're not going anywhere.

The actual core of EL supports it fully: building loops through all required resources transferring amounts at 0.2t/Kh (kerbal hour: productivity unit) spread across the resources (ie, total transfer is 0.2t/Kh). It is just that at present, only one resource (RocketParts) is in the list of required resources. Also, the build window displays all resources in the required list. The only places "RocketParts" is mentioned in the source is BuildCost.cs and Recycler.cs

Thus, it is necessary only to create a more detailed required resource list in BuildCost.cs, and then you can build requiring the resources of your choice. Then, to get the most out of that, Recycler.cs should be fixed to work similarly to the pads (workshop interface, figure out what resources can be extracted from the vessel, transfer them at a certain rate (with losses)).

Actually, this would be a perfect opportunity to make Recycler.cs work one part at a time: transfer resources for the part (with losses), reducing the part's mass appropriately (no losses: eg, 1kg of part becomes 0.8kg of resources, part's mass is reduced by 1kg), and when the part's mass reaches 0, destroy that part. I find the recycler's instant destruction far more unsettling that the pad's instant construction. Maybe because there's no visual waring of impending destruction, but you click a button to get the construction.

I have both Kethane and Karbonite installed. However, the raw resource I need isn't Kethane or Karbonite, but "Ore", which is discovered with the scanner that comes with this mod, right? And this "ore" might or might not be at the same spot Kethane or a Karbonite hotspot is located, right?

Correct.

Then, once I discover it, I need to send a ship with the mining drills included in this mod. Kethane or Karbonite drills won't work, right?

The next step is to have a smelter part in the miner or a ship docked to the miner/tied with a KAS pipe so I convert "ore" into metal.

More or less correct. You can instead ship a pad and a supply of parts and build your miner and smelter there. If you ship a workshop (big blue thing), you can ship metal and convert to parts there, or you can ship enough parts to build miner, smelter and workshop, and build everything there.

And yes, ore drills are different from kethane or karbonite drills (I might be wrong: karbonite drills may be universal: check with the karbonite people).

Then I ship "metal" to something with a Workshop (that's the part where it's best to have ten kerbals with low stupidity), which will convert it into "rocketparts"

Unless everything is on-site, then yes. Metal is probably the most convenient to ship.

[taniwha]

I'm having problems with my orbital construction site. It seems that my orbital factories are bugged, it says there isn't enough room for more rocket parts but every container is empty there is plenty of ore and metal and crew and I had successfully built other craft earlier. Any ideas?

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. Could you post a screenshot showing what you mean?

[AlonzoTG]

I was trying to get to Minmus, ended up in a highly eccentric orbit of Kerbin, my launch altitude was ~3,333 which is what I found to be a good altitude for launching big ships. My orbital velocity was a few hundred m/sec. (all of this can be de-coded from the orbital specs I pasted earlier.)

The ship was still more or less pointed pro-grade, iirc. the orbital dock was mounted on the side of a sub-unit of the ship.I was facing extreme space constraints when designing that sub-system and ended up making many compromises in order to make it compact and structurally viable. I since replaced some stock structural elements with procedural parts so I could tighten up the design some more.

I since cleared away most of the ship there are only three modules remaining, a badly damaged "omega tug" unit, the resource processing modules including many of your parts, and a xenon auxillary propulsion unit on the tail. There are no control units of any kind remaining, especially no mechjebs, attempting to spawn the new ship still produces the same error. My DMP server is public so you can download my modpack, see what changes I made, and then log into my server and play with the ship I'm talking about. it is still in its original orbit, I since moved the middle of the ship, a "Station Science" section, out to minmus to do score a few dozen sci points. http://godarklight.info.tm/dmp-serverlist/

[Autochton]

The actual core of EL supports it fully: building loops through all required resources transferring amounts at 0.2t/Kh (kerbal hour: productivity unit) spread across the resources (ie, total transfer is 0.2t/Kh). It is just that at present, only one resource (RocketParts) is in the list of required resources. Also, the build window displays all resources in the required list. The only places "RocketParts" is mentioned in the source is BuildCost.cs and Recycler.cs

Thus, it is necessary only to create a more detailed required resource list in BuildCost.cs, and then you can build requiring the resources of your choice. Then, to get the most out of that, Recycler.cs should be fixed to work similarly to the pads (workshop interface, figure out what resources can be extracted from the vessel, transfer them at a certain rate (with losses)).

I'm curious as to how you'd determine the resources needed for a given part. I was thinking of going by tech node and/or part type, to get maximal coverage of existing and mod parts. Do you have any good ideas on that front? Certainly it needs to be config file based, since making it switchable for resolution level would be at best irritating otherwise - a more open structure would make more sense there. Let people do their own damn work. ;-)

[RunAwayItzJack]

I feel really dumb for this... but I'm missing the blue workshop part I think, and after reading the tutorial post I don't think I can use the Orange Orbital Rocket Workshop... can I? any help I can get would be amazingly appreciated, I just started off with this so I'm kind of stumbling through this!

Thanks for reading in any case, take a silly Jeb!

[taniwha]

I'm curious as to how you'd determine the resources needed for a given part. I was thinking of going by tech node and/or part type, to get maximal coverage of existing and mod parts. Do you have any good ideas on that front? Certainly it needs to be config file based, since making it switchable for resolution level would be at best irritating otherwise - a more open structure would make more sense there. Let people do their own damn work. ;-)

Well, parts could have a node (added via MM) that gives an EL recipe (resource amounts should probably be ratios rather than masses). For any parts that don't, any MODULE nodes could be used to determine a suitable recipe. No modules = structural, command module = add electronics, engine module = add refractory metals, etc

I feel really dumb for this... but I'm missing the blue workshop part I think, and after reading the tutorial post I don't think I can use the Orange Orbital Rocket Workshop... can I? any help I can get would be amazingly appreciated, I just started off with this so I'm kind of stumbling through this!

If you just started, you might have added this to an existing save which means that you may not have "purchased" the parts in the research facility. Check your tech-tree for researched nodes with numbers on them.

I know nothing of the Orange Orbital Rocket Workshop. Something to do with Karbonite? If it has an ExWorkshop MODULE node, then you should be able to use it.

[taigan242]

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. Could you post a screenshot showing what you mean?

Here you go. I don't know how to make it big in this form so here is a link to imgur

[AlonzoTG]

Al's tutorial post

Here's my best understanding of how to use this mod.

1. repairs: the kethane based resource conversions are broken (as of 8.8.x) you will need to re-write them in the .cfg files to some other resource conversion utility that Actually Works .

2. There are an excessive number of useless parts in the distribution, weed out all parts that have type = none or are just silly and redundant, like the dozens of versions of the same crappy tank. Replace with Procedural Parts tank, there is a cross-compatibility part that magically appears when both mods are installed.

3. The runway and especially the launchpad parts have beautiful animations but are so unweildy as to be useless. It might be possible to use them with KAS but I have not tested that yet. The launchpad is especially broken because it has a node hanging out in mid air/space several meters away from the stack. It also has a crew of 2 despite not having a compartment or hatch for said crew making it impossible to transfer them to another craft. The only usable part is the orbital spacedock.

4. The construction process begins with the Orez. Ore is a standardized resource that may be obtained through one of several mods. It may be obtained using the kethane style scanning and augur equipment that comes with this mod, it may also be obtained with Karbonite's parts or from asteroids from the Asteroid Resource Toolkit (or similar name). There could also be some other mods out there that will provide it.

5. Since smelting discards 40% of the mass as slag, you REALLY want to smelt it before launching it. Also, with the procedural tanks and KW rocketry, it is possible to launch a 350+ ton slug of metal from Kerbin.

6. A functioning construction base must have the construction dock. It must also have a workshop with a parts converter in order to process the metal. The conversion process is 70% efficient, The filings/shavings/waste should be recycled with an on-board smelter which can restore the system to 100% efficiency. So the smelter goes under Really Should Have . You will then need a bin for the parts and a fuel depot with at least enough to get the rocket to the next fueling station.

7. Assuming the UI component is working (it uses KSPAPIextensions) it will be possible to select any of your designs, or even subasemblies, and send them to be fabricated. The fabrication process can be sped up by having more kerbals in suitable modules on the base. My ship had a crew of 21, including the workshop. This could be an issue because there aren't all that many astronauts in the program and it is likely that you have at least a skeleton crew at each of the bases the contracts want you to build.

[dzikakulka]

@Alonzo

1. Kethane 0.8.8.1 with taniwha's fix already works fine. And there is also 0.9 out...

2. I think having base mod with least dependencies possible is good. Maybe I do not want to build on Procedural Parts but on FStexture switch thingy instead. Having no dependency at all in base is the most universal.* But it's up to creator of course.

About excess parts - again - it's so easy to delete them.

4. Unless you use adaptation mod (Wombats Karbonite conversion), let's say Karbonites or ARTs "Ore" is not the one you'll be able to use. Base version of this mod uses Kethane-like resource and nothing else will work despite same/similiar name.

*this is actually loosely applicable to tanks. Tanks are easy to create and manage (ofc except for models and animations, just assuming we'll steal some from one of the gods around here). I'm more about hard dependencies.

Edited September 14, 2014 by dzikakulka