[1.12] Extraplanetary Launchpads v6.99.3

[Ralathon]

I'd suggest not to use it too much in its' current state.

The idea of the mod is splendid, but the implementation is awful.

I've spent several hours today revealing the problems:

1. NEVER rename the launchpad or change its' vessel type (it's "Base" by default).

2. Same for any command modules that were stages alongside with launchpad.

3. NEVER rename or change vessel type of anything that was assembled on a launchpad.

The above causes launchpad disappear when moving from site to center & back.

Haven't the slightest idea why it can be so. Proly, some mod can also interfere, but no idea what it can be.

Are you sure the game doesn't randomly think the launchpad is on a suborbital trajectory (Thanks to float errors in collision detection) and you're just messing up correlation and causation? I can rename whatever I want without running into that bug. The launchpad is big, heavy and doesn't have its own landing legs. That's floating point error bait.

[Awesome_Guy]

If you installed it correctly you should have a load of new parts.

The most important parts are the Launchpad and the orbital dock. These allow you to actually build things. To build things you right click the Launchpad or orbital dock while and select "Show Build Menu". This will open a window that allows you to select one of your previously saved crafts. If you select the craft you want to build it will show you how much rocketparts, fuel, electricity etc it costs. If you agree with those costs and you have the required resources you can click build and the selected craft will spawn on the launchpad or docked to the orbital dock.

To get rocketparts you need the Kethane mod and the mining equipment that comes with this mod. (If you don't have Kethane I think it allows you to build things for free, although I am not sure on that). You first need to scan a planet from orbit using one of the scanners to find ore the same way you would locate Kethane. Land in a ore rich area and use the Augur to gather it. You then need to convert the ore to metal in the smelter part and then the metal to rocket parts with the Rocket Workshop. So the flowchart goes:

Scan from orbit

Land in Ore rich area

Mine Ore with Augur

Store Ore in a appropriate container

Smelt Ore to Metal with Smelter

Store Metal in a appropriate container

Convert Metal to Rocket Parts with the Rocket Workshop

Store Rocket parts in a appropriate container

Use Launchpad to convert Rocketparts and fuel to your saved constructions.

The Orbital Dock works pretty much the same as the Launchpad except it is intended to be used while in orbit.

As you can see it takes a lot of effort to build a base big enough to sustain this whole production chain (And preferably, also a Kethane operation to provide the fuel). You'll have to dock a lot of modules together, either via careful engineering or the KAS mod. But once you have the whole thing up and running you are going to reap some serious benefits. If you build your base on the Mun it only takes 1/7th the dV to get into orbit and there is no atmosphere to hold you back.

excellent thanks so much

also i did find my problem.

i had the parts in my parts folder but i didnt have the mod in my game data

please dont ask me how these events transpired, i have no idea how either of them did

but this quick guide is sure to help

If you build your base on the Mun it only takes 1/7th the dV to get into orbit and there is no atmosphere to hold you back.

what is benefit of mun vs minmus

any real difference

Edited January 16, 2014 by Awesome_Guy

[notafurry]

excellent thanks so much

what is benefit of mun vs minmus

any real difference

Minmus will have even lower dV requirements and is easier to build on if you can find a combined Kethane / Ore deposit on a frozen sea.

On the other hand, it's harder to get your initial parts to than the Mun (and the EL parts are heavy, even if you do the bootstrap "send minimal parts and build onsite" method).

Personally, I prefer to build my bases on Minmus and operate from there, but there's definitely an extra cost to it.

[Ralathon]

what is benefit of mun vs minmus

any real difference

Minmus would be even better. Lower gravity and nice flat areas. The only reason I tend to built on the Mun is because I play with Life support mods and a 10 times rescaled kerbal system. So trips to and from minmus take too long for comfort. That, and I just prefer the looks of the mun. Minmus's color always reminds me of moldy bread. I have a fleet of probe controlled kethane tankers that constantly cycle between Minmus and low munar orbit though. It's cheaper in dV to import kethane from minmus than from the mun (about 4k for a round trip to the mun, only about 3k for a round trip to Minmus).

[mossman]

I was rather disconcerted at the poor quality of some of the art assets of this mod, so I endeavored to adapt my own admittedly meagre modelling skills to create a more photogenic Smelter, to start.

I've also made some Modular Fuels configurations for EPL to eliminate redundant resource containers. Does anyone have an interest in obtaining any of this?

[likke_A_boss]

I was rather disconcerted at the poor quality of some of the art assets of this mod, so I endeavored to adapt my own admittedly meagre modelling skills to create a more photogenic Smelter, to start.

http://puu.sh/6nyvz.jpg

I've also made some Modular Fuels configurations for EPL to eliminate redundant resource containers. Does anyone have an interest in obtaining any of this?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! That looks awesome.

[taniwha]

Horus: Other than sometimes not being able to get the build menu (and even then, indirectly), the problems you describe are not EL bugs, but KSP ones (though EL may be more prone to tickling them).

The pad checks its current situation (landed, orbiting, suborbital, flying, etc), and will not let you build if you are not landed, splashed, orbiting, or prelaunch. This means that it is really KSP causing the missing build menu button. Really, while neat, launchpad2 is not very usable. All of your other problems come from KSP's confusion as to the situation of your pad, and there is nothing I can do about that. If using KAS (or Hooligan Labs' stuff) to bolt things down helps, then use it. There's no point in me making a third copy, especially when a base without KAS is pretty painful anyway.

mossman: nice, but I will have to say "no, thank you". However, not for the reasons you might be thinking. I have begun to think (unfortunately, after including Aeon's parts) that really I should be removing parts from EL, not adding more. EL itself should have just the barest minimum of parts to act as demonstrators and to make EL at least usable, even if not particularly attractive. Eg, I far prefer the Hooligan Labs pad to any of the pads in EL (except the orbital dock, but they serve different purposes, though that's not yet enforced in the code).

A little while ago, Majiir informed me that people asked him* why EL has any parts. This is what got me to thinking about seriously cutting down on EL parts, but increasing options on what EL can do, and improving how EL does what it does. So, for those of you complaining about EL's graphics, I have but one suggestion. Otherwise, hold onto your hats, the ride will get more interesting as I add functionality to EL (time permitting :/).

* Via other sites he frequents but I don't. It seems those people know he has my ear (which I consider to be a good thing).

[Bobhendly]

Eh.. Im not so sure about that. I like the concept of the foldy Launchpad in the pack, It looks awesome! I don't mind removing the hexcans and having pretty looking resource containers, And the pack needs a ore scanner.. But there is no need to NOT have parts.

[Superfluous J]

I like the idea of having a bare minimum of stuff that works. Putting something in that doesn't work just makes the pack look bad.

Though IMO a scanner, container, drill, launch pad, and orbital construction port are included in the definition of "bare minimum." You should be able to actually build things with the mod that purports to let you build things

[mossman]

mossman: nice, but I will have to say "no, thank you". However, not for the reasons you might be thinking. I have begun to think (unfortunately, after including Aeon's parts) that really I should be removing parts from EL, not adding more. EL itself should have just the barest minimum of parts to act as demonstrators and to make EL at least usable, even if not particularly attractive.

That's understandable, but I'd think that almost anything art-wise would be a welcome improvement over some of the current models. If you're going to have any parts at all, they should be presentable, aye?

That said, I'd like to make some comments on the balance of the smelter. The large smelter, consuming 95.8 kg of ore (Assuming Fe(III) Oxide) per second, would require, given thermodynamically perfect energy transfer, about 92 Megawatts of thermal power to heat incoming ore to 1400 K (Which is a good assumption for iron smelting). 95 kg/s of iron production is quite a lot, after all.

Obviously power of that magnitude is a bit outside the scope of vanilla KSP (Especially if you consider one unit of electric charge to be 1 KJ).

However, I feel that the current power requirements do make setting up industrial sites a bit trivial - Especially if one uses KSP Interstellar, in which Megawatt production scales are actually quite feasible.

This may be outside the range of playability-vs-realism but I think I should throw that out there.

Also, according to Wikipedia, large modern blast furnaces with volumes exceeding 5500 m^3 can produce 80,000 tons of steel in a week which would equal about 0.4 400 kg per second assuming the furnace was ran 7 days a week, 8 hours a day.

I'm assuming the model I made has an interior volume of about 38 m^3, and assuming a linear relationship between production rate and volume my little blast furnace would produce 2.8 kilograms of iron per second (Or 2400 kg per day), equal to 0.26 6.4 units of metal per hour, and consume no less than a measly 2.7 MW. Food for thought.

Edit: Conflated tons with kilograms, fixed

Edited January 17, 2014 by mossman

[Kaa253]

... I have begun to think (unfortunately, after including Aeon's parts) that really I should be removing parts from EL, not adding more. EL itself should have just the barest minimum of parts to act as demonstrators and to make EL at least usable, even if not particularly attractive.

Excellent!

Eg, I far prefer the Hooligan Labs pad to any of the pads in EL (except the orbital dock, but they serve different purposes, though that's not yet enforced in the code).

The only two parts I use exactly and as you say the HL pad isn't even from EL. Oh, I do use the little ore scanner part but only because I have been too lazy to change it, not because I like it.

A little while ago, Majiir informed me that people asked him* why EL has any parts. This is what got me to thinking about seriously cutting down on EL parts, but increasing options on what EL can do, and improving how EL does what it does. So, for those of you complaining about EL's graphics, I have but one suggestion. Otherwise, hold onto your hats, the ride will get more interesting as I add functionality to EL (time permitting :/).

Great news taniwha! You can simply focus on adding, as you say, interesting functionality of the plugin itself. I look forward to that

I would also like to see a range of competing, alternative and compatible parts being offered by independent modellers. I am no expert on copyright but I assume this approach can work very well and very easily for EL as it uses the GNU General Public License? I look forwards to seeing some interesting and attractive work aimed at EL from the wonderful artists contributing already to the KSP modding community.

[Ralathon]

If you want to go the "Less is more" approach (One that I deeply encourage, I hate parts clogging my tabs), one thing you could do is to take the Spherical and Toroidal fuel tanks approach.

Use firespitter to adjust textures on tanks and Modular fuel tanks to adjust the contents. That way you just need 3 tanks (Small, medium large) to contain all 3 resources and textures in any configuration.

If your aim is to reduce parts you could also take the drastic step of removing the metal step in the production chain. Metal is kind of a useless step in the process, it's more expensive to ship than rocketparts and it has no purpose other than crafting it into rocketparts. So why would you ever have a situation where you don't immediately convert it to rocketparts?

If you need a new scanner model, someone in the Scansat thread posted a very good looking one. I've modded it to act as Ore detector and it looks much better. You could ask him if you could use it.

[taniwha]

5thHorseman: Not to worry, I wouldd make sure there was at least one of each necessary part.

mossman: Ah, thank you very much. I have been looking for information on the energy requirements for smelting. I probably could have worked out a reasonable approximation on my own, but never had the time. While the power requirements are crazy (for KSP), they certainly are within reach with interstellar, and I have no trouble adjusting balance for game play so long as I know that I am adjusting (eg, putting in comments on what the real values would be).

I thought the 80000t was per year. Per week makes things much more reasonable. However, that works out to 132kg/s for 24/7 operation (80000/7/86400), about twice the rate of the current large smelter.

Please don't take me the wrong way with my refusal of your model. I very much welcome any balancing input!

Kaa253: Actually, it was something Aeon said to me in a private message about "company logos" that planted the seed for some of my ideas. It got me thinking that it might be better that I provide construction related parts while he provides production related parts. Later, Majiir's comment made me realize that EL could create a whole ecosystem of parts "companies". And yes, the GPL very much fosters this sort of activity.

Ralathon: Absolutely. And since I've taken over MFT maintenance, EL depending on MFT is much less of a problem than usual. Again, the problem has been time and priorities.

Rather than metal, I'm thinking of removing RocketParts. Also, for a not yet fully thought out hard mode, I'm thinking of replacing Metal and Ore with much more specific resources: iron, titanium, aluminum, etc. Later construction functionality would take those resources and directly convert them to actual parts.

Did you know that aluminum can be used as a dopant in silicon for electronics? I guess it replaces the boron. I found this in the Landis paper I linked in my 2nd or 3rd post (first page). Lots of Al but not much B on the moon, it seems (very little C, btw).

[Horus]

The pad checks its current situation (landed, orbiting, suborbital, flying, etc), and will not let you build if you are not landed, splashed, orbiting, or prelaunch. This means that it is really KSP causing the missing build menu button. Really, while neat, launchpad2 is not very usable. All of your other problems come from KSP's confusion as to the situation of your pad, and there is nothing I can do about that. If using KAS (or Hooligan Labs' stuff) to bolt things down helps, then use it. There's no point in me making a third copy, especially when a base without KAS is pretty painful anyway.

Bolting down the stuff with KAS didn't play a trick.

It seems that I'm the only one having launchpad issues(build option excluded). Interesting. Especially, taking into account that I was using clean 0.23 client build with only EL mod added.

Again, landed launchpad2 (didn't try with others) on the Mun. Constructed a rover (default vessel type "Debris". wat?!). Can switch to space center or any other object without any problem. Until the idea to change constructed off-planet rover vessel type. After the next switch to space center - launchpad disappears. Is it really a problem of KSP itself and some "physics-shmisics"? Sad.

Guys, how do you use the launchpads for building off-planet without losing them?! I'd like launchpads stay where they were left & not "be stolen by aliens".

[mossman]

Use firespitter to adjust textures on tanks and Modular fuel tanks to adjust the contents. That way you just need 3 tanks (Small, medium large) to contain all 3 resources and textures in any configuration.

I've modded my install to do just that (Except I edited some of my own textures to act as one-size-fits-all replacements for the Hexcan parts).

The MF configs are pretty easy to work with; would you like me to share them with you?

Rather than metal, I'm thinking of removing RocketParts. Also, for a not yet fully thought out hard mode, I'm thinking of replacing Metal and Ore with much more specific resources: iron, titanium, aluminum, etc. Later construction functionality would take those resources and directly convert them to actual parts.

Did you know that aluminum can be used as a dopant in silicon for electronics? I guess it replaces the boron. I found this in the Landis paper I linked in my 2nd or 3rd post (first page). Lots of Al but not much B on the moon, it seems (very little C, btw).

Since spacecraft are typically made out of high-strength, lightweight alloys of various proportions of steel, aluminum, titanium, manganese, magnesium, et al, I think it would make sense to have a "foundry" part that would mix alloys and in a sense replace the parts workshop. You could then use your super space alloy (Plus whatever auxiliary parts) to directly build spacecraft.

Maybe you could use only steel/iron for manufacturing on-site equipment that you won't need to move anyway, or maybe certain spacecraft parts with possible added negative mass/strength effects.

Another idea I had is that certain industrial processes could work at higher efficiencies (or at all) only when in certain gravity conditions. So for instance you'd have specific industrial process #1 only working well in freefall, etc. You'd theoretically be able to have processes requiring gravity to function in orbit if you built a centrifuge; the only limitation to this that I can see is that angular momentum is destroyed when you enter non-physical time warp. Is it possible to fix this?

Also, since aluminum mining is already integrated into KSPI, the possibility of an overlap occurs. However, once the stuff is actually out of the ground (via KSPI's ISRU system), I'd think it would be fairly easy to mod compatibility with cfg editing. Is this correct?

[Ralathon]

Rather than metal, I'm thinking of removing RocketParts. Also, for a not yet fully thought out hard mode, I'm thinking of replacing Metal and Ore with much more specific resources: iron, titanium, aluminum, etc. Later construction functionality would take those resources and directly convert them to actual parts.

Hmm, it would certainly add another layer of complexity if you have to gather resources from all over the place. But how would you determine which parts require what resources? You could specify it on a part by part basis, but that would make it very hard to combine with other mods. I suppose you could base it on item class or something. Structural parts require titanium, aerodynamic parts require aluminium etc. But that's a lousy approximation at best.

I also worry about the viability of surface bases. If you introduce multiple resources that you need to gather from all over the place an orbital station becomes much more viable.

To build a ship at a base using different resources you need to:

Launch X miners from base to relevant resources. (1x dV for a launch each)

Land X miners on the relevant resources. (1x dV for landing each)

mine resources

Launch X loaded miners to base (1x dV for launch each)

Land X loaded miners at base (1x dV for landing each)

transfer resources, process and build ship.

launch ship (1x dV)

If we assume you're building this on an airless world (dV launch = dV landing) that means you need dV*4*(X-1)+dV where dV is the dV to make orbit and X is the number of resources (the -1 is because presumably you place your base on one of the resource patches). If you play from an orbital base on the other hand:

Land X miners on relevant resources (1x dV for landing)

mine resources

Launch X loaded miners to base (1x dV for launch)

Rendezvouz, transfer resources, process and build ship.

So an orbital base only needs dV*2*X to build your ship. As is the 2 are pretty close, with the orbital base requiring twice the dV to make a ship, but saves you from having to actually launch the ship. However, if you introduce more resources the formula swings completely in favor of the orbital system. For 4 resources you're looking at 13*dV for the base and just 8*dV for the orbital. Remember that each dV means sitting through a repetitive launch/landing sequence and the time of the player is the most important resource in a sandbox game. If you want a base you either need to get very lucky and find 2 resources that overlap (And preferably also a kethane patch).

I'm not saying multiple resources can't work. But you have to be very careful with the implementation. You don't want to turn the whole process into a boring grind, because the need for efficiency will get in the way of artistic freedom.

Oh, and if we do have to build actual parts before constructing a spacecraft. Please implement some button that automatically ques up all the required parts for a selected craft. I really don't want to manually click 300 parts and build spreadsheets to figure out if I have enough cubic octagonal struts.

Did you know that aluminum can be used as a dopant in silicon for electronics? I guess it replaces the boron. I found this in the Landis paper I linked in my 2nd or 3rd post (first page). Lots of Al but not much B on the moon, it seems (very little C, btw).

Yes I did in fact. Aluminium is part of the Boron group. Since it has 3 valence electrons you can use it as a electron acceptor in a silicium roster. But people prefer to use Boron because it diffuses into the Silicon crystal lattice at a much faster rate (Thanks to its smaller size). This makes it easier to build junctions since the gate can be embedded much deeper into the surface, making it less error prone. Luckily you only need trace amounts to dope a semiconductor. So I'm sure we won't have to resort to aluminium if we ever built a fully functional moonbase IRL.

The Carbon is a bit of a bigger issue however. You need large amounts of carbon to make steel, so if we ever start to seriously build something on the moon we either need to ship the carbon there (Nobody wants this, rockets are expensive), rely on aluminium (Aluminium has a nasty tendency to die to metal fatigue, something that would occur rapidly in -100C to 200C day night cycles) or use some alternative alloy.

(Hah! And my friends told me that minor in nanotechnology and solid state physics would never pay off!)

[JewelShisen]

Horus: Other than sometimes not being able to get the build menu (and even then, indirectly), the problems you describe are not EL bugs, but KSP ones (though EL may be more prone to tickling them).

The pad checks its current situation (landed, orbiting, suborbital, flying, etc), and will not let you build if you are not landed, splashed, orbiting, or prelaunch. This means that it is really KSP causing the missing build menu button. Really, while neat, launchpad2 is not very usable. All of your other problems come from KSP's confusion as to the situation of your pad, and there is nothing I can do about that. If using KAS (or Hooligan Labs' stuff) to bolt things down helps, then use it. There's no point in me making a third copy, especially when a base without KAS is pretty painful anyway.

mossman: nice, but I will have to say "no, thank you". However, not for the reasons you might be thinking. I have begun to think (unfortunately, after including Aeon's parts) that really I should be removing parts from EL, not adding more. EL itself should have just the barest minimum of parts to act as demonstrators and to make EL at least usable, even if not particularly attractive. Eg, I far prefer the Hooligan Labs pad to any of the pads in EL (except the orbital dock, but they serve different purposes, though that's not yet enforced in the code).

A little while ago, Majiir informed me that people asked him* why EL has any parts. This is what got me to thinking about seriously cutting down on EL parts, but increasing options on what EL can do, and improving how EL does what it does. So, for those of you complaining about EL's graphics, I have but one suggestion. Otherwise, hold onto your hats, the ride will get more interesting as I add functionality to EL (time permitting :/).

* Via other sites he frequents but I don't. It seems those people know he has my ear (which I consider to be a good thing).

Speaking of the HooliganLabs Launchpad~ I am trying to make a new one that will be FAR more compact but am having some trouble getting it to animate correctly. Perhaps you can help me figure out where I am going wrong.

[Patupi]

Mossman: I think what he was going for was that different components would require different amounts of ores/metals. Thus some materials would need to be shipped in, from elsewhere on the moon/planet, or from further afield if that material wasn't available on that body.

[Patupi]

The Carbon is a bit of a bigger issue however. You need large amounts of carbon to make steel, so if we ever start to seriously build something on the moon we either need to ship the carbon there (Nobody wants this, rockets are expensive), rely on aluminium (Aluminium has a nasty tendency to die to metal fatigue, something that would occur rapidly in -100C to 200C day night cycles) or use some alternative alloy.

Well, as to alternative alloys, if you're willing to go with something that is more difficult to manufacture how about beryllium bronze? I don't know if beryllium is available much off world in any quantity, but copper certainly is. As a side benifit, mixing iron systems, alongside aluminum, and beryllium bronze would reduce the likelihood of vacuum welding

[Ralathon]

Well, as to alternative alloys, if you're willing to go with something that is more difficult to manufacture how about beryllium bronze? I don't know if beryllium is available much off world in any quantity, but copper certainly is. As a side benifit, mixing iron systems, alongside aluminum, and beryllium bronze would reduce the likelihood of vacuum welding

Beryllium occurrences on the moon are probably about the same as on earth. Both are formed from the same material after all. The problem is that extracting Beryllium and purifying it is rather hard. So it would require a lot of hardware and thus isn't suited for bootstrapping your base. Not to mention that Beryllium (and copper for that matter) are very valuable thanks to its unique properties. You don't want to waste it as a bulk building material. I imagine you'd much rather use the beryllium to make mirrors for that telescope that has all your astronomers drooling. And you probably want to use the copper for heat exchangers to keep your base comfy.

[Patupi]

I thought in asteroidal material copper was plentiful?

(EDIT: By which (in KSP) that means that small bodies would have it, which haven't had enough gravity to cause the heavier metals to sink to the cores. IE Bop, Pol and Gilly... oh and Dres too I guess. Hey! Finally a reason to go to Dres! )

Edited January 17, 2014 by Patupi

[JeffreyCor]

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or misunderstood the change long. I believed it said the recycling bins were now targetable, but I am still unable to target my recycle bin. Does the pre update recycler have to be removed and an new one installed? or did I misunderstand what was meant? Thanks

May see the problem, the launchpad.dll file is 0 bytes in the download. Sounds like something might be missing

Thanks Gaius (below) removed the zero length and it all started working much better.

Edited January 18, 2014 by JeffreyCor
Found 0 size dll in download

[Gaius]

Actually, looks like there's two of them: a zero length one in the main directory, and then a 36K one in the Plugins directory.

[taniwha]

Ugh, it's getting a little difficult to participate in this thread (actually, a good thing, really).

Horus: I do not remember the circumstances, but I actually have had a base (or built ship, I don't remember that either) disappear on me. What I do remember is that I had somehow gotten out of the 2.5km range (flew? space center?) and because KSP saw that the object was moving, suborbital, and below a certain altitude, KSP deleted that object. EL has little to do with vessel type other than trying to preserve it because the way EL "stabilizes" a built ship (ie, avoids explosions) is to force-dock the new ship, then undock it. Since your test setup is stock+EL, getting me persistence/craft files might help.

JewelShisen: The more pads out there, the better

From here, topic based discussion rather than aimed at anybody in particular

Lunar beryllium seems to be about 6ppm (going by the one hit I looked at), not a lot, but how much is necessary? Also, while the moon and Earth are "made of the same material", that's only half true. Earth's average density is around 5.5t/m³. The moon's is around only 3.3t/m³. The heavy stuff just isn't there (though beryllium isn't heavy stuff, so this is just a "look, they are different).

My understanding (prone to error) of steel's main advantage is its rust resistance. Not really necessary in a vacuum environment. Elemental iron is actually fairly common on the moon and easy to obtain: grinder + magnet. Even if steel has other advantages, there may be alternatives.

Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) is a very strong contender for lunar construction material. Light, strong, durable, and everything is there.

Copper... wanna bet Minmus is verdigris?

Apparently, the main problem with the Landis refining method is not the difficulty of refining (regolith in, various fluorides out), but the need to take into account all those trace elements to minimize fluorine loss, though lithium and beryllium might be a little tricky, though electrolysis will probably do the job.

Condition based refining: very high on my desirables list. The problem is implementation.

I have come to the conclusion that EL's resource system is too simple to support much game-play depth, but I want to tread carefully. I want to make EL much more interesting to "play", but I don't want to bog the play down in too many details.

Resource compatibility between mods is certainly not a problem, so long as us modders keep in touch. Or better yet, create (and use) a central collection of resource definitions.

[mossman]

My understanding (prone to error) of steel's main advantage is its rust resistance. Not really necessary in a vacuum environment. Elemental iron is actually fairly common on the moon and easy to obtain: grinder + magnet. Even if steel has other advantages, there may be alternatives.

That's only true for certain steels, i.e chrome or nickel alloys (stainless). Steel's advantage over iron is increased strength and hardness.