[1.12] Extraplanetary Launchpads v6.99.3

[taniwha]

Another update: my work on recipes is not done yet, but it's getting close so I decided to push my work to github. Those that wish to take a peek can now do so (and if you have git, make, mono and sh, you can build it and play around). The main issues right now are all in the recycler.

[jimos]

Nothing will build I have made a construction pad orbiting the moon but it never builds anything does it have to be manned or something?

[taniwha]

jimos: Yes, it must be manned, by engineers. Anything less than the rocket workbench (tower thing in pods) requires level-1 engineers, but the workbench and the workshop (big blue thing in utilities) allow level-0 engineers to be productive. My recommendation is to fly out with some crew container (any pod, the hitchhiker can, or the science lab) with engineers, then build the workbench (only 1.5t), which takes up to four kerbals (external command seat), and attach it somewhere using KIS. Then, if you wish, some time later you can build a workshop at a reasonable pace (15t takes a while).

[jimos]

I'm a tad confused. is sent up a normal command pod with the orbital construction dock on it? but I need some kind of workshop?

[taniwha]

Command pods have a productivity factor of 0.25. Since this is less than 1, you need a level-1 engineer (and not too stupid) in it for there to be any productivity. The hitchhiker can has a productivity factor of 0.4, and the science lab is 0.6 (thus they all need a level-1 engineer (ie, one star)). The workbench has a productivity factor of 1, and the workshop has a productivity factor of 5. As both are at least 1, even level-0 engineers can be productive in them. Pilots and scientists cannot be productive without a level-5 engineer in the same part (though stupid ones can hurt the productivity of the vessel).

If you have a normal command pod with your orbital construction dock, then the problem will be one of three things:

1. You do not have a level-1 (one star) engineer in the pod.
   
2. Your engineer is too stupid and has a zero or negative productivity (Bill gets 0 (-1e-8, but meh) until he's got a couple stars under his belt (2 for workshop/workbench, 3 for pods)).
   
3. Your stupid kerbals outweigh your smart engineers.
   

Right click on the pod to check its productivity (and the productivity of the entire vessel when you have multiple workplaces). Vessel productivity is what affects build rate (the unit is kerbal-hours (Khr), and it takes 5Khr per ton of dry-mass.

Of course, there's the possibility you are short of resources, but I would hope the UI makes that obvious enough.

To see how courage and stupidity affect a kerbal's contribution to productivity, check the graphs Kerbas ad astra did (linked from the OP).

[Qigon]

Command pods have a productivity factor of 0.25. Since this is less than 1, you need a level-1 engineer (and not too stupid) in it for there to be any productivity. The hitchhiker can has a productivity factor of 0.4, and the science lab is 0.6 (thus they all need a level-1 engineer (ie, one star)). The workbench has a productivity factor of 1, and the workshop has a productivity factor of 5. As both are at least 1, even level-0 engineers can be productive in them. Pilots and scientists cannot be productive without a level-5 engineer in the same part (though stupid ones can hurt the productivity of the vessel).

If you have a normal command pod with your orbital construction dock, then the problem will be one of three things:

1. You do not have a level-1 (one star) engineer in the pod.
   
2. Your engineer is too stupid and has a zero or negative productivity (Bill gets 0 (-1e-8, but meh) until he's got a couple stars under his belt (2 for workshop/workbench, 3 for pods)).
   
3. Your stupid kerbals outweigh your smart engineers.
   

Right click on the pod to check its productivity (and the productivity of the entire vessel when you have multiple workplaces). Vessel productivity is what affects build rate (the unit is kerbal-hours (Khr), and it takes 5Khr per ton of dry-mass.

Of course, there's the possibility you are short of resources, but I would hope the UI makes that obvious enough.

To see how courage and stupidity affect a kerbal's contribution to productivity, check the graphs Kerbas ad astra did (linked from the OP).

Oh I though scientists and pilots could contribute anytime for building. So they can lower vessel productivity but will never let it go up being the numbers that an engineer alone would get?

An unrelated question, is there a rule of thumb for how many rocket parts it takes to produce an individual part? My educated guess is something linearly proportional to the dry mass?

- - - Updated - - -

Edit: *beyond* the numbers that an engineer alone would get?

[taniwha]

Qigon: not never: a level-5 engineer will allow pilots and scientists to bring up the numbers (this means in sandbox (or science?) mode, at least one engineer is needed, but the others can be anything). This rule is per crewed part.

With default settings, 400u/t of dry mass (1t of RocketParts per ton of dry mass).

[Angelo Kerman]

I'm in the process of integrating EL into Pathfinder. Are there any plans to switch from using MetalOre and Metal to CRP's MetallicOre and Metals?

Edited August 14, 2015 by Angel-125

[goldenpsp]

Are there any plans to switch from using MetalOre and Metal to CRP's MetallicOre and Metals?

+1 Unless there was a fundamental problem with the CRP versions it would certainly be nice for the mods to play nice together.

[taniwha]

Considering EL came long before CRP, I think the request is backwards.

[Angelo Kerman]

Considering EL came long before CRP, I think the request is backwards.

Ok, just checking, I want to make sure I have the right resources in use. Thanks for the info.

[goldenpsp]

Considering EL came long before CRP, I think the request is backwards.

Ok maybe not phrased correctly. Interstellar came long before CRP, but it was the driving force behind making a community resource mod, so that everyone that wanted to use say, water could use a common definition of water and therefore play nicely when multiple mods were used.

So....

Would you ever consider opening up dialog within the CRP thread to have your Metallic Ore become the common ore type for use in the creation of rocketparts?

[taniwha]

I have released EXPERIMENTAL version 5.2.90 of EL. The link to 5.2.2 is still in the OP as I imagine playing with the new features of EL until they are proven fairly solid will not be everyone's cup of tea.

Changes from 5.2.2:

• Recipes. This is the major feature enhancement and the source of the experimental status. Most of the details are covered in this post with the addition of EL_TransferRecipe (for transferring stored resources when recycling) and EL_KerbalRecipe (for unfortunate kerbals). This is mostly for modders: the default configuration should result in no change for most users.
  
• Most parts are now manufactured by Kairyuu Shipping (kairyuu = sea dragon in Japanese, and "sea dragon" is one interpretation of "taniwha" (Maori)). btw, "kigh-dew" ("kigh" like "high") is probably close enough. Also, the "wh" in "taniwha" is a cross between "f" and the old-style "wh" in white and whale.
  
• Kairyuu Shipping is a proper Agent: you may get contracts from Kairyuu Shipping, and you can use the manufacturer filter in the VAB/SPH.
  
• A flag for Kairyuu Shipping has been added.
  
• Recycling a large vessel is no longer instantaneous: the vessel is torn down part-by-part and the resources from each part transfered (or dumped) before the next part is processed. Warning: things may go wrong with the tear-down (not a bug!).
  

While a large amount of work went into this release, the list of user-visible changes isn't that long.

I do plan on documenting the recipe system properly, but that will be a fair bit of work, and I'd like some feedback from modders on it before I get too stuck into the documentation.

Please, bash away at it and submit any issues to github.

[Whovian]

Quick question: did the update break UKS's integration? That is, should UKS users update now or wait for UKS to make a compatibility update?

[taniwha]

Whovian: It should be ok as the default is still to use RocketParts for building and to recycle to Metal, but I have submitted an issue to RoverDude's repo to ensure he's aware. Really, if it does break UKS's integration, I would consider that to be a bug and want to know.

[goldenpsp]

Quick question: did the update break UKS's integration? That is, should UKS users update now or wait for UKS to make a compatibility update?

I doubt it. There are no hard dependencies between the two. UKS has a slightly different path to rocketparts and the EPL modules are basically MM configs of the EPL workshops.

[taniwha]

Would you ever consider opening up dialog within the CRP thread to have your Metallic Ore become the common ore type for use in the creation of rocketparts?

Actually, I need to consider this very carefully: what path do I want to take for simplified EL (this is where recipes come in: they allow for tailor-made difficulty(detail) levels)?

My objection was really at the apparent assumption that EL must change to fit with CRP. Part of the goal of recipes was being more community ... concious? There is now no hard-coding of any resource remaining in EL, other than KerbalHours (tbh, I forgot to tackle that before releasing), and a couple of hard-coded defaults for when certain recipes are not present.

[edit]Oh, the mass of a boarded kerbal is presently hardcoded, too.

Edited August 15, 2015 by taniwha

[smjjames]

Any progress on the exception reported back here? I didn't see any mention on the experimental changelog.

[goldenpsp]

Actually, I need to consider this very carefully: what path do I want to take for simplified EL (this is where recipes come in: they allow for tailor-made difficulty(detail) levels)?

My objection was really at the apparent assumption that EL must change to fit with CRP. Part of the goal of recipes was being more community ... concious? There is now no hard-coding of any resource remaining in EL, other than KerbalHours (tbh, I forgot to tackle that before releasing), and a couple of hard-coded defaults for when certain recipes are not present.

[edit]Oh, the mass of a boarded kerbal is presently hardcoded, too.

I'm sorry if you are feeling that we are asking you to change anything. I don't know if you ever followed the CRP thread, but it was in no way a one sided creation. Every mod dev that participated worked together to come up with the values for each resource that satisfied everyone. in fact the curators of various resources are handled by the modders who use them primarily. It is in no way a "Roverdude my way or the highway". For example the resources that Freethinker uses for Interstellar extended is curated by him etc. I would expect if anything it would be CRP changing to fit your resources not the other way around.

[Angelo Kerman]

Actually, I need to consider this very carefully: what path do I want to take for simplified EL (this is where recipes come in: they allow for tailor-made difficulty(detail) levels)?

My objection was really at the apparent assumption that EL must change to fit with CRP. Part of the goal of recipes was being more community ... concious? There is now no hard-coding of any resource remaining in EL, other than KerbalHours (tbh, I forgot to tackle that before releasing), and a couple of hard-coded defaults for when certain recipes are not present.

[edit]Oh, the mass of a boarded kerbal is presently hardcoded, too.

That must've been poor communication on my part. My intent wasn't to request conformity with CRP, it was more to gain an understanding of your vision and direction for the mod so that Pathfinder can be on the same page as EL. Wouldn't want all those metal and metal ore cans to go to waste by replacing the established production chain.

Edited August 15, 2015 by Angel-125

[taniwha]

goldenpsp, Angel-125: it seems to be poor communications all round. I apologize for my (probably very large) part in it. You two are not really part of the problem, just the proverbial straw: I've gotten enough flak about the resources (and I'm grumpy about certain aspects of the situation) that I get a bit touchy about it. I am sorry. Just one thing: I will not use stock Ore: the resource definition and its conversion ratios are all wrong: there's no room in it for resources suitable for building (except plastic, of course).

It's not much, but this post gives some hints as to where I wish to take EL. EL's recipes support is something I've been working on (mostly thinking) for a very long time, and the Landis paper is its goal. I even have python code in EL's repository that processes chemical formula (take a look in tools in the top level directory).

[taniwha]

smjjames: sorry, I forgot about that. Thank you for the reminder.

[Angelo Kerman]

Wow, that is a pretty cool paper! Pretty cool that you have recipes now too. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

[RoverDude]

Hopping in to add some background.

CRP used to (and still does for RocketParts) take it's lead from EL. Probably the only item outstanding is that I wish RocketParts were a 1L resource since everyone else switched over to that model with 1.0, but that's Taniwha's call, and we'd stick with however he defines RocketParts regardless.

The main disagreement/bone of contention/what have you that I (personally) had with EL was the single resource->rockets path. Regardless of what that resource was called. When plunked alongside UKS, it invalidated the UKS production chain (which is based on breadth not depth). So, the first choice was to just hide EL parts. This in turn caused a ton of unwanted support issues.

Hence, with 1.0 I intentionally broke to separate resources so that people could use the EL chain or the UKS chain without us stomping on eachother. This is still far from ideal.

Given we now have recipes (and I need to dig into it), I'm curious where this will put default EL. If it still remains MetalOre -> Metals -> Rockets, then I'll just need to override it via a lot of MM magic. the rub (and it is what it is) is that a single harvest resource model and a multi-harvest resource model are fundamentally incompatible.

That being said, if EL ever moved to a multi-resource model, I'd be the first to quite happily change all of my mods to follow suit. But single resource pretty much kills most of what UKS does, so until then I'll very likely swap to what I am doing with OSE, which is a lot of module manager tweaks - although I am working with that mod's author to get OSE Workshop and UKS working together straight off CRP and with no MM tweaks needed. Ideally that's where I would love to see EL land, but given it's Taniwha's baby and Taniwha's vision, I'm fine with building out the middleware if need be.

Said middleware could of course be used by other mods along the way, and would be available separately. This would help OSE and EL play nicely with or without UKS (there are some other exploit issues with RocketParts that having some revised recipes would help address).

[taniwha]

No time for a proper response now, but I have never liked the single resource path (ie, [*]ore->metal->rocketparts). I have never liked even RocketParts.