[0.90WIP] Procedural Parts - Parts the way you want 'em 0.9.21, Dec 19

[DIREWOLF20.]

make procudaral engine's with liquid fuel engine jet engine's ion engine's and nuclear(more effecient but less power) solar panels and wheels and rover wheels and intake's pods make it awesome with a ton of items this would make this the best mod EVER

[coldblade2000]

It says right in the OP that procedural engines are NOT planned.

[NathanKell]

I said by Meta Materials, you will not have limits; that is not the same thing as saying, *until then* in the tech tree you won't have limits. My assumption (perhaps invalid) was that the screenshots were from earlier on in the tech tree, where things are limited.

Regarding procedural engines: not happening any time soon. At *best* I will keep this mod *working*, which I stepped up to do because no one else had forked by then. I am not in a position to code gigantic new features, sorry. (Although, as always, pull requests are very welcome!)

[GiantTank]

I would just like to say thanks for making the best mod for your computer ever!

Seriously. You can make your own everything. You dont need to keep so many parts in those mods, which kill your RAM. I just keep engines. It reduces part count so much too! Thanks so much!

EDIT: How would I change the Srbbell size at the start? When you first add the SRB, I wanna have a bigger bell because I changed the start size to the booster size I always use, thrust too, but the bell is still starter size.

Edited October 24, 2014 by GiantTank

[GiantTank]

(Sorry for dbl post, edit button won't work).

It appears it is a bug. Bell size does not increase as thrust increases. Should I reinstall?

[SlickyNick]

I've an issue with tanks. For some reason fuel tanks don't contain any fuel and cost is 0. Any idea what could be the issue?

Possible conflict with some other mod?

[Noio]

I found an *excellent* bug this weekend - ships containing the procedural tanks will, after a few SOI changes, start logging errors about zero-mass parts, and will begin to 'accordion' slowly - imagine a bunch of small weights connected in a row by weak springs (so, weight - spring - weight -spring - weight ...), and then pushing on the one 'in back' to make the whole thing kind of inchworm along the long axis. It's very excellent looking but hard on the SAS.

I will poke through the code tonight and see if I can't make sense of it unless somebody else is already looking at this one.

[Starman4308]

I've an issue with tanks. For some reason fuel tanks don't contain any fuel and cost is 0. Any idea what could be the issue?

Possible conflict with some other mod?

Did you at all install Real Fuels? Real Fuels will force you to pick your propellant (easiest way is to slap an engine underneath, toggle the engine to the desired fuel, right-click the fuel tank, and press a button to automatically fill it with the appropriate propellant mix). It'll also reduce the costs of fuel enormously to be more in line with reality, where fuel costs are basically pennies compared to the hardware.

That said, the cost for procedural fuel tanks seems way out of proportion with other tanks: KW tanks and stock tanks are costing ~40x more per volume than procedural fuel tanks.

[SlickyNick]

Did you at all install Real Fuels? Real Fuels will force you to pick your propellant (easiest way is to slap an engine underneath, toggle the engine to the desired fuel, right-click the fuel tank, and press a button to automatically fill it with the appropriate propellant mix). It'll also reduce the costs of fuel enormously to be more in line with reality, where fuel costs are basically pennies compared to the hardware.

That said, the cost for procedural fuel tanks seems way out of proportion with other tanks: KW tanks and stock tanks are costing ~40x more per volume than procedural fuel tanks.

No, Real fuels isn't installed. Shouldn't this work without any mods installed?

[Starman4308]

No, Real fuels isn't installed. Shouldn't this work without any mods installed?

It should work without other mods. I was just trying to eliminate a possibility.

And point out that procedural fuel tanks cost way less than they should.

[NathanKell]

I enabled procedural cost support. I did not, however, balance it against stock, sorry. Partly because I don't know how, because I don't play stock. Any and all feedback on costs greatly appreciated (and has been requested before too).

[Starman4308]

I enabled procedural cost support. I did not, however, balance it against stock, sorry. Partly because I don't know how, because I don't play stock. Any and all feedback on costs greatly appreciated (and has been requested before too).

When I've got a spot of time in the next few days, I'll try to whip up a table of fuel mass/cost ratio, probably ordered by rank of tank size (small ones are probably more expensive), but a procedural fuel tank with the approximate volume of a Rockomax Jumbo-64 cost about 1/40 of a Jumbo-64 tank. If so desired, I'll also include KW Rocketry tanks, which appear to be in the same ballpark as stock tanks.

You might then add multipliers for tank type: relatively cheap default-type tanks, and expensive specialized tanks (particularly the balloon tanks*).

*God bless balloon tanks for their almost ridiculously lightweight construction.

[RadarManFromTheMoon]

I enabled procedural cost support. I did not, however, balance it against stock, sorry. Partly because I don't know how, because I don't play stock. Any and all feedback on costs greatly appreciated (and has been requested before too).

Just found a bug in the procedural costs implementation. IPartCostModifier.GetModuleCost() always awaits a price for the full tank.

foreach (PartResource r in part.Resources)
{
    PartResourceDefinition d = PartResourceLibrary.Instance.GetDefinition(r.resourceName);
    if((object)d != null)
        cost += (float)(r.amount * d.unitCost);
}

must be:

foreach (PartResource r in part.Resources)
{
    PartResourceDefinition d = PartResourceLibrary.Instance.GetDefinition(r.resourceName);
    if((object)d != null)
        cost += (float)(r.[B]max[/B]Amount * d.unitCost);
}

This is a bit strange, but I think it's from the time when it was not possible to tweak the fuel of a tank. I made the same mistake with Procedural Airships.

You can easily see the error when tweaking a tank until it's empty. The costs will go negative.

[NathanKell]

Edit:

Yeah, quite right. The subtraction based on resource amount is done by KSP, so yeah it should be what you wrote. Thanks!

[SlickyNick]

Alriight finally figured out what was causing the problem. I've multiple Module Manager ddls and cleaning up the older ones solved the problem.

[Starman4308]

I enabled procedural cost support. I did not, however, balance it against stock, sorry. Partly because I don't know how, because I don't play stock. Any and all feedback on costs greatly appreciated (and has been requested before too).

Whipped up a spreadsheet. Stock KSP values are on the left, values for my usual configuration (Real Fuels w/ stockalike config) on the right. The summary is that, in stock, for typical tanks, it costs 1.541 funds per unit liquid fuel + oxidizer capacity*. Fuselages are a little bit all over the place, but generally cheaper. The smallest 1.25m tanks, the Round-8, and the Oscar-B all cost more (sort of to be expected). For Real Fuels, similar patterns apply, with 0.41 funds per liter capacity.

I also suspect somebody at Squad might've made a typo entering in the cost for the Kerbodyne S3-14400 (given the pattern, I suspect it was supposed to cost 28,800, not 22,800).

EDIT: Made a goof: 1.541 funds/L is the figure with accounting for oxidizer volume. It's 4.44 funds/volume LF in stock.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Starman4308

[NathanKell]

Ah, RealFuels! Those have resource prices based on the 1965 US dollar cost of the resource, so don't expect any balance with KSP.

[Starman4308]

Ah, RealFuels! Those have resource prices based on the 1965 US dollar cost of the resource, so don't expect any balance with KSP.

Eh, even in stock KSP, fuel costs are still a relatively small fraction*. The use of FAR/NEAR alone is going to do far more to unbalance KSP's career mode than a drop in fuel prices.

*The only major concern would probably be SSTO spacecraft, which go from "ludicrously efficient" to "plaid efficient". Unless, of course, you neglect the rearwards shift of CoM, and it lawndarts on reentry, in which case your recovery is approximately 0% of value.

Might I suggest the formula for procedural fuel tank costs be (tank type modifier) * (1.5 * volume + 200)? I'm not sure if the config for RealFuels should be part of that mod or part of Procedural Parts, but for that, just swap out 1.5 * volume with 0.4 * volume. That should approximately get the costs of large fuel tanks right, while still adding a penalty for dinky tanks.

[NathanKell]

At least on the RealFuels side (and across RO), costs are going to be in 1965 US dollars all around (or reverse-inflation-adjusted for modern components, I think). As for Procedural Parts, I will try to use the same costing Squad does for the non-NASA parts.

[TK421d]

has anyone else had a problem when using a tweaked engine (usually to a smaller size) at the bottom of a procedural tank, works fine, but when loading a craft the engine will be about 1/2 meter below the tank. obviously causes explosions when loading craft in orbit... lol.

i've found myself trying to find filler pieces to put in between the tanks and engines now

[NathanKell]

Yes, there's an interaction issue between a proc part and a tweakscaled part. Problem is both change their shape and then move the other part to the new attach node position...but since *both* of them change, the moves conflict.

[PhaserArray]

Do you have any plans for hexagonal, octagonal, rectangular and whatever-the-SPP-shape-is-called shapes for pieces (pieces that would fit nicely with the stock probe cores and the Mk2 parts)?

[cipherpunks]

I'd like to see the possibility of creating Soyuz-like side tanks (slanted cone) - should also be useful when doing spaceplane tail (I mean like in B9 one can change to straight-top or conical tail).

Also, adding RSS config to balance the mass (and Isp etc for SRB) of everything like it is IRL (hint: use that Ni-H2 battery as batt.weight) would be great too - I'm kinda tired editing it by myself.

Speaking of tanks, however, changing the structure weight in accordance to, say, H2/LOX or RP1/LOX requirements is something to think of. Especially in light of low-pressure H2 tank proposal for SKYLON.

(no, no RF here yet, just saying)

[NathanKell]

PhaserArray: I have no plans for this at all, other than fixing bugs. I would, in fact, be extremely happy if someone were willing to add that stuff (or anything else) but I'm *way* overstretched myself.

cipherpunks: use Realism Overhaul and Real Fuels. Everything will be as correct as we can make it. Do you have stats on Ni-H2? I couldn't find any in the wiki; RF battery mass and volume is based on my best guesses....

[smartdummies]

Just a quick note on the sizes for the real fuel tanks. There is no entry for the 3.75/5m tanks. You are stuck with a 3m diameter until metamaterials. I assume that there souls be a maxDiameter entry of 5m at heavyRocketry (?).